Professors Winchester
by Origamidragons
Summary: Dumbledore can't find a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Unfortunately, word about the cursed position is beginning to spread, but luckily, he's finally found a candidate- or rather, two. There's just one problem... they're hunters. Or: Sam and Dean teach DADA, fifth year is insanity, and Dumbledore might just have bit off more than he can chew. S8 of SPN, Book 5 of HP
1. Chapter 1

Dumbledore sighed, shifting through piles of candidates for the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. The ministry was pushing for one of their own for the position, a woman by the name of Dolores Umbridge who was by all accounts absolutely horrible in every way. He needed to find a reasonable alternative, but none were forthcoming. He popped a lemon drop in his mouth and set the list aside as the Floo powder in the fireplace activated, flashing bright green before fading to reveal a well-dressed couple that he recognized immediately, his face splitting into a wide smile.

"Don! Maggie! How have you been? Would you like a lemon drop?" he offered, holding up the bowl.

Don took one while Maggie politely declined, both taking seats in front of his desk. Maggie was grinning widely.

"Albus, it's been too long. We wanted to invite you to our seven hundred and fiftieth anniversary next month!" she said sweetly. Dumbledore feigned surprise.

"Is it already? Seems just yesterday it was seven hundred. I'd love to come, but I'm having quite a bit of trouble finding a new Defense teacher. The last one... left unexpectedly and now the ministry is pushing for one of theirs for the spot, a horrible toad of a woman, but all of the candidates here are either under-qualified or dead," he complained, picking up the list again.

"Funny you should say that," Don said, glancing up. "There are these two brothers who helped Maggie and I when we were going through a bit of a... rough patch last year."

Dumbledore frowned. "Oh, dear. No civilian casualties, I hope?"

Maggie waved the question off. "Nothing big. But those two were very helpful. Hunters, of course, and Americans, so you might not want them here... but they did know their business."

Don nodded in agreement. "Sam and Dean Winchester. You may have heard of them? Apparently they helped to avert the Judeo-Christian Apocalypse a few years back in the Americas. You should come visit sometime, by the way."

"Of course," Dumbledore agreed. "Winchester, you say? I'll look into it. And, of course, I'll be at your anniversary."

~o~

Dean almost blew the owl's head off when it landed on the windowsill of their current cheap motel room. It was only Sam's (annoyingly reasonable) protests of _'wait, Dean, don't use the shotgun, the cops will hear'_ that stayed his hand long enough for his little brother to snatch the gun out of his hands and open the window, letting the bird in. It spread wide, snowy wings and alit gracefully on the back of the chair like it hadn't just been threatened with violent dismemberment.

Sam sent him a brief bitchface, then reached down and untied something from the owl's leg, which it obligingly extended for him. "Dude, I think this is a letter." He unrolled it and his brow furrowed further. "From an... Albus Dumbledore."

Dean snorted in disbelief. "What? No way that's a real name. Gimme," he ordered, making a grab for the parchment (and who the hell used parchment anymore? He'd only ever seen it used for writing down spells and ancient texts), but Sam jerked it out of his reach, using his annoying Sasquatch height to his advantage.

"He's the Headmaster of... Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," Sam said slowly, reading the signature aloud.

"Fuck, dude," Dean swore, successfully snatching the letter out of Sam's hand to read it for himself. "There's a whole fucking _school_ for witches? What do they teach, 'Demon Worship 101?' 'Selling Your Soul for Dummies?'"

Sam rolled his eyes, grabbed the letter back and read a paragraph aloud.

 _"I understand you have previously encountered Dark Witches and Wizards that dealt with dark powers to come by their magic. The students and faculty here at Hogwarts were born with their abilities."_

"Huh," Dean said. "And you just believe that?"

Sam was still reading the letter. "Dude. They want us to teach there."

" _What?_ Even if these _are_ a bunch of Glinda-the-Good-Witches, which I'm still not sold on, by the way, why would they want us within a hundred miles of that place? I mean, they know what we do, right? We are literally the _last_ people anyone should be trusting around a bunch of magic kids!" Dean ranted, waving his arms in the air as he paced around the cramped and shoddily constructed room.

"We should go," Sam said suddenly.

"Are you _drunk,_ Sammy?"

"No, actually, unlike you, it's not my default state," Sam said drily. "Just- think about it. If this is a training ground for bad witches, we want to check it out anyways. And if it's not, Dean, they want us to teach _Defense Against the Dark Arts._ That's basically what we do anyways, except they'd pay us. We don't have much to do right now except wait for Kevin to translate the tablet. It'd be like a paid vacation."

Dean wavered for a moment and Sam hid his triumphant grin. "Fine," he eventually grumbled. "We'll check it out. But that's all!" he insisted, jabbing a finger for emphasis.

Sam smirked to himself and set to writing Dumbly-doof a reply as Dean ran a hand over his face and attempted to banish the gathering headache with alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol. A brief fluttering of wings a few minutes later caught his attention and he joined Sam at the window to watch the pure white bird flutter off into the sunset. Dean hoped they wouldn't be expected to place all their calls like they were trapped in the sixteenth century. Hadn't these so-called witches ever heard of cell phones?

 **I needed to write a fic where Sam and Dean became DADA professors, okay? Sue me. Set during Book Five for Harry Potter (at least right now, subject to change) and S8 of Supernatural (somewhere between Hunteri Heroici and Trial and Error).**


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, the owl was there again, waiting on the windowsill and shifting from clawed foot to foot with something like impatience. It sent Sam a look when he finally opened the window, something translating roughly to 'about freakin' time, I've been here all night.'

"Sorry," Sam said, stepping aside so the bird could fly past him and reclaim its spot on tops of the chair. Dean was awake pretty much instantly at the sound, hand already reaching under his pillow towards the gun stashed there.

The bird gave him a disdainful look and he retracted his hand.

"Dude," he said, bleary with sleep, "did you just apologize to the bird?"

Sam and the owl both looked up from where Sam was untying the sheaf of papers from the owl's leg to shoot him twin bitchfaces, and he quieted down, an impressive feat for anyone.

Sam unfolded and shuffled through the papers, summarizing them aloud as he skimmed over them. "Some more information about the school and what we'll be doing... essentially, we're teaching these kids how to defend themselves against ghosts, werewolves, vampires, curses, and other stuff."

"So... what we usually do, except we have to play babysitter," Dean complained from the bed and was eighty percent sure he earned himself an eye roll from the snowy white and grey owl. He wondered suddenly if it was an actual owl, or some sort of familiar or shifter. You never knew, with witches. Fucking witches.

"And we get paid," Sam reminded him mildly. "They're paying us in gold, Dean."

Dean immediately shot up into a sitting position, banging his head against the bed frame and cursing loudly. Sam snickered with laughter. "Gold?"

"Gold," Sam confirmed, plucking a coin out of the package and flipping it over to him. He snatched it out of the air and examined it closely under the light of the lamp while Sam continued to talk over him.

"There's this evil wizard called Voldemort they want us to focus on- helping the kids train to fight him."

"The fuck is with these names? Dumbledore, Voldemort..."

Sam shrugged. "They want us to be there for a few days before term starts to get settled in, so they sent this." He paused to hold up a necklace that had been tucked in with the letter and dangled it from his hand so his brother could see.

"A necklace?"

"It's called a Portkey," Sam read out. "At noon on Saturday- so two days from now- he should be all packed and put a hand on it and it'll take us to the school."

"No way!" Dean protested. "That could have a nasty curse on it, dude! No way."

"Sure, Dean, let's just take a plane," Sam offered with a mischievous grin as Dean immediately backpedaled.

"You know what? Let's go with the weird magic necklace."

~o~

Come noon on Sunday, the boys were standing together in the middle of the bunker, each holding their suitcases (and it was a good thing that they'd been raised to pack in a hurry and not need much) in one hand and the necklace chain in the other. The clock ticked over to twelves and Dean felt a fish hook tug behind his intestines, an altogether unpleasant sensation to put it very, very mildly, and then the two of them were sprawled on the ground outside of a towering castle.

Sam let out a feeble groan that more or less articulated Dean's thoughts as he lay there.

There was the three-tap clicking sound of boots and a cane on cobblestone, and Dean craned his head backwards to see a severe-looking woman wearing a long black robe and an honest-to-god pointy witches' hat. He didn't think actual witches had worn those since the Dark Ages.

"You must be our new Defense teachers," she said with a stiff and proper British accent as the two Winchesters slowly picked themselves up off the ground, eying her suspiciously. "I'm Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall. I teach Transfiguration. It's a pleasure to meet you."

She waited politely until they were both fully on their feet, Dean's hand resting on the gun on his hip, before swiveling on her heel with her cloak billowing out dramatically behind her in a move that just had to be practiced and leading them indoors.

After sharing an uncertain glance, the two hunters followed.

~o~

The school was like a maze, and quite a few moving portraits were threatened before Professor McGonagall confiscated the gun and informed them with some degree of exasperation that magical paintings did move, and they were not in any form dangerous.

This did not stop Dean from watching them out of the corner of his eye as they resumed their long walk through the halls. Nor did it stop him from filling Peeves with rock salt when the poltergeist tried to sneak up behind him- the operative word, of course, being tried. McGonagall seemed fine with that, although she did make them promise not to shoot any of the other ghosts that they may come across.

"I understand you're used to dealing with the uncivilized and rage-driven ghosts of muggles," she said. "Ours are kept largely sane after death by magic."

Dean muttered something about the use of the word 'largely,' but reluctantly promised. Sam followed his lead, though he'd been surveying the castle with more curiosity than suspicion. McGonagall also seemed to take notice of this, and muttered something about raven claws before they came to an abrupt halt in front of a gargoyle statue that reminded Dean of a living stone gorgon that he and Dad had hunted while Sam was at Stanford. It hadn't been an easy hunt.

"Chocolate frogs," the professor sounded out clearly, although the expression on her face was something closer to bemused and fond exasperation. The statue swung inwards to reveal a small winding staircase, which the Winchesters hesitantly trailed their escort up as she climbed.

Sitting behind a desk at the top of the stairs in a simultaneously roomy and cozy office was Gandalf the Purple reading a very thick tome embossed with a few vaguely familiar symbols, and Dean was about to address him as such when Sam drove an elbow into his ribs, evidently sensing that his brother was about to say something rude and inappropriate.

Little brothers sucked sometimes.

McGonagall cleared her throat to catch Gay Santa's attention although Dean was certain the guy had heard them come in, and he looked up from his book with a friendly smile and twinkling eyes. "Why hello," he said. "You must be the Winchesters? I'm Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts. Would you like a lemon drop?" he offered politely, gesturing to the bowl on his desk as McGonagall quietly excused herself.

"Don't mind if I do," Dean said, grabbing a handful of candy before sitting down. He could practically feel Sam's bitchface scorching his neck, but his little brother took a seat next to him anyways. Sam was practically broadcasting 'I'm so sorry for this one, he's not my fault, I swear' so hard it was probably being picked up by satellite antennae on the other side of the world.

"It's a pleasure to meet you boys, and it would be my honor to be the first to welcome you to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," Dumbly-whatever said. "All the relevant information should have been sent by owl. The bird is a gift and you may keep her," he added absently. "You'll need her to send and receive letters and news."

Sam immediately started questioning Dumbledore on the differences between being born with magic and trading demons for it ('so it's not always inherited, but sometimes?') in true geek-boy fashion, while Dean injected with more to-the-point inquiries ('if they're evil do they die like humans?') and steadily worked his way through the entire bowl of lemon drops.

By the time both boys had exhausted their questions (and Dumbledore's candy supply, something widely thought to be impossible) and were (more or less) satisfied with the answers they had received, McGonagall reappeared to lead them to their quarters.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hey! First of all, thank you so much to the following reviewers:**

 **Elise477**

 **Nemezus**

 **Guest**

 **Second of all, it's been a while since I read the Harry Potter books, especially the fifth one, which you will recall as 'roughly big enough to bludgeon an elephant to bloody death,' so my apologies for anything I get wrong.**

Sam and Dean spent the week or so in between their arrival and the time a flood of witches and wizards in training would pour through the doors trying desperately to cram all of the necessary knowledge into their minds. Or, Sam did. Dean trusted him to summarize everything important for him, which was maybe not wise, but we'll get to that later.

They, of course, had more than enough practical knowledge (their entire lives, more or less, discounting the years each had taken off for college or a domestic life because the other was trapped in some afterlife or another) to teach a class on hunting and killing evil things. The problem came when it came to magical culture, because yes, there were apparently enough of them for them to have their own subculture.

They had frequent visits from the other professors as they arrived, several of whom seemed rather nervous around them. Sam tried to ensure them that they only hunted Dark Witches and Wizards, though his heartfelt reassurance was somewhat spoiled by Dean conspicuously cleaning his guns in the background.

Once Professor Sprout had left, shaking, Sam spun to shoot his brother a deadly look. "Dean," he said, running a hand down his face, "is that really necessary? If nothing goes wrong-"

"Winchester luck, Sammy. You just jinxed it."

"If nothing goes wrong," Sam repeated clearly, speaking over his brother, "we'll be teaching here for the whole school year. There's no point in you antagonizing the entire faculty."

With a huff, Sam returned to an excruciatingly thick tome called Hogwarts: A History that Dean was pretty sure would function better as a bludgeoning weapon. Dean was flipping through a substantially thinner book on common Dark magic curses.

"I recognize a few of these," he said suddenly, catching Sam's attention. "Remember that guy in the Samhain town, who was coughing up razor blades?"

Sam winced in sympathy at the memory. "They were in the Halloween candy."

"Yeah, him. Well, look at this," he said, passing the book over to his brother still open to the page. Sam squinted at it and read from the page aloud.

"'Acutus Cibus- A Dark spell to cut the innards of your enemy through his food.' Looks about right," Sam said. "Wow. I wonder..." he paused to flip back to the index and ran a finger down the worn parchment. "Here's the other one, the girl who boiled in the apple bobbing tank. Cruedelis Coquo."

Dean snatched the book back. "There's counterspells, Sammy! Ways to reverse the curse besides finding the hex bag."

Sam smiled. "See? This isn't that bad, is it?"

Dean scowled at him, schooling his excitement back into a definitely-still-not-happy face that wasn't fooling anyone, least of all Sam.

~o~

By the time the start of term rolled around, they were... well, not ready, but ready enough. Ready enough, at least, that they weren't completely caught off guard by the singing hat and the floating candles and everything else. They had a basic grasp of most of the spells they had to teach the students (though most of their lessons would be more practical) and understood that they were to help the fifth and seventh years prepare for their OWLs and NEWTs respectively, names that still had Dean snickering every time they were mentioned.

Dumbledore, in what Sam was sure was an attempt to placate Dean, had said that they didn't have to wear robes if they didn't want to, which was good as they didn't own any robes and had no idea where to get them. They were a bit out of place wearing their usual flannel and jeans at the head table, but neither Winchester brother was particularly concerned by the dress code or the strange looks they were getting from several students.

"Dude," Dean hissed under his breath, "some of those kids are only, like, ten."

"Eleven," Sam corrected.

"Still. They start 'em that young?"

"Looks like," Sam said, picking up on Dean's discomfort. Having been raised in a lifestyle they never had any choice in from a young age made them look at the youngest witches and wizards in a new light. He was pulled out of his train of thought by the entrance of a kid, maybe fourteen or fifteen, with messy black hair and glasses and maybe a weird scar peeking out from his hairline. He nudged Dean to attention.

"That's the one we're supposed to keep an eye on. Harry Potter."

"Oh, yeah. Another kid who has to deal with the 'Chosen One' bullshit, right? Poor kid," Dean commented with a sympathetic grimace as his eyes also found the fifth year student. Sam nodded unhappily. That was something they could always agree on: Destiny was bullshit.

The students were split into four long tables running the length of the room, each clearly color-coded, which made things thankfully easier for the Winchesters. There was the red Gryffindors, blue Ravenclaws, yellow Hufflepuffs, and green Slytherins, which Sam had repeated to Dean until he was ready to throw his nerd brother into a wall.

But he did remember them, so maybe there was something to Sam's method, not that he would ever, ever tell him that.

~o~

Harry Potter's year was not off to a great start. Before school had even started, he'd already been nearly expelled from Hogwarts for using magic to save his cousin (whom he didn't even _like_ ) and put on a full-blown trial just for protecting himself in a life-threatening situation. Ron and Hermione had become prefects and he should be happy for them and he really was trying to but he'd barely seen them since getting on the train, they'd been so busy, not to mention that Ron had been chosen over him and then he felt even worse for being jealous of his friend. When he finally arrived at Hogwarts, Hagrid had been missing and replaced by Professor Grubbly-Plank and the charming magical carriages were now pulled by gaunt, winged horses. Thestrals, Luna had said.

It was looking to be just a great year.

When they arrived, the first thing Harry did was scan the head table to a sinking disappointment when he saw that Hagrid was indeed nowhere to be seen before his interest was piqued by two men sitting up where the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher would usually be, but they couldn't be, they weren't even wearing robes. They were looking at him strangely, not with the mixed excitement and pity he usually got, but instead something softer. Sympathy, almost like they knew exactly what he was going through, but that was impossible.

Wasn't it?

He listened carefully to Dumbledore's introductory speech, and heard the two men introduced as Professors Sam and Dean Winchester, who would indeed be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Then the feast began.


	4. Chapter 4

After the feast, Sam and Dean were both mentally exhausted from constantly having to field questions from the other teachers and very inquisitive students (which was most of the younger ones).

Sam stifled a yawn as he flipped through a book. "We- we need to be ready for our first class tomorrow..."

Dean was already out cold, and a few minutes later Sam also have up and surrendered to his exhaustion.

~o~

It was lucky the Winchesters were accustomed to extreme physical exertion while running on three hours of sleep, because it meant they were able to get up bright and early with a minimum of yawning and complaining and be wide awake by their first lesson of the day- first years, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.

Dean grinned wickedly and Sam glared at him, already resigned to having to do damage control. "Don't traumatize them," he pleaded half-heartedly. Dean reciprocated with the most unconvincing innocent look Sam had ever seen.

"I'm hurt, Sammy. I would never."

Sam eventually gave up and settled for 'just don't shoot them,' and Dean was about to reply with false indignation when a flock of owls swooped low into the dining hall, a familiar white and downy grey one landing lightly on Dean's shoulder.

"I think she likes you, Dean," Sam said with an obnoxious smirk as he untied the letters from the bird's leg. Dean frowned and attempted to brush the flying rat off of him, but the bird danced away and pecked at his fingers.

"We should probably name her," Sam said after a pause. "I mean, if she's actually ours now."

"Ace," Dean said immediately, and the owl let out what he thought was a pleased hoot. Even Sam looked happy for a moment too, before he explained his reasoning. "Like AC/DC."

Sam opened his mouth to object, closed it, sighed, shook his head, and turned back to his food while Dean shuffled through their mail. "How are we getting junk mail by _owl_?" he wondered aloud, pulling a new paper from the heap. "And tabloids?"

Sam leaned over to look at it and raised an eyebrow. "The Daily Prophet? Looks like trash. How much you wanna bet they've never met an actual prophet in their lives?"

~o~

When the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff first years stumbled in first period, the first few pulled up short at the impressive collection of weapons stacked up at the front of the room, and the fact that one of their Defense teachers was flipping through a ridiculously heavy book while the other casually cocked a shotgun. This caused a small traffic jam in the door, and the teacher with the gun snickered when he caught sight of it. The one with the book sighed and walked up to help the fallen students.

"You all right?" he asked, and received frightened nods in response. He turned to glare the the one with the gun, who signed and tucked it away somewhere, and the students relaxed. Marginally. They all found their seats and watched the teachers expectantly.

Sam smiled in a failed attempt to make them forget his brother's unsubtle and completely successful attempt to intimidate them with a shotgun. "Hi. I'm Professor Sam Winchester, and this is my brother, Dean Winchester. We're going to be teaching you Defense Against the Dark Arts this year."

There was a general, still slightly frightened, murmur of 'hello.'

"We're not going to kill you," he added, and that was something that no teacher should ever have to tell their students but it seemed to work because a good number of the students relaxed significantly (though it was somewhat undermined by Dean's murmur of 'yet.')

Sam swiveled and glared at Dean, who replied with a shit-eating grin, before evidently deciding to ignore him for the time being, turning back to the students. "So, this year your focus will not be just on avoiding Dark magic. We're also going to be teaching you how to defend yourselves against monsters. Ghosts, werewolves, demons, angels..."

"Ghouls," his brother piped up. "Pagan gods, reapers, poltergeists, wendigos, shifters, skinwalkers, hellhounds, kitsune, arachne, amazons, leviathan, banshees, revenants, black dogs, changelings..."

As they went back and forth, their eleven-year-old audience grew steadily paler.

"Djinn," Sam added, picking up the list again. "Rawheads, fairies, sirens, familiars, golems, dragons-"

"Dragons?" someone whispered, sounding panicked.

"Lamia," Dean continued, ignoring the interruption. "Vampires... Hey, what were those fat-suckers in Minnesota?"

"Pishtacos," Sam answered absently.

"Pishtacos," Dean repeated. "Okami, shojo, rugaru, vetala, aaaand zombies."

Some of the first-years were now shaking. A Hufflepuff in the front row had passed out. Dean decided that maybe he liked this teaching gig.

~o~

The day seemed to pass in a blur until it was time for the fifth year Gryffindor and Slytherin class, and Harry filed into the room with Hermione and Ron, the trio catching a poisonous glare from Draco and his cronies as they took three seats right next to each other and watched the teachers at the front of the room. They had only taught four classes so far and already there were rumors circulating like mad. Ron's eyes got big when he was the first to take notice of a heap of weapons in the corner, seemingly thrown there with little regard for how dangerous they were.

One of the teachers- the tall one with the long hair who seemed far more enthusiastic about being there- stepped forward with a smile. "Hi, I'm Sam Winchester and this is my brother Dean. We're going to be teaching you Defense Against the Dark Arts this year.

He gestured to the short and grumpy one, who glanced up to wave at the class before returning his attention to the gun that he was systematically dismantling, cleaning, and reassembling. Harry noted that they still weren't wearing robes- they were both in jeans, the shorter- Dean- wearing an old t-shirt that said 'Led Zeppelin' on it and a leather jacket while the taller, Sam, was wearing plaid.

"This year," Sam continued, repeating his speech from earlier that day, "We'll be focusing more on defense against monsters as well as Dark magic, along with helping you prepare for the OWLs later this year. Any questions?"

Draco openly sneered at the two teachers. "Really? _You're_ our new teachers? Are you mudbloods?"

The taller one flinched just a little bit, although Harry couldn't help but think the reaction was a bit odd, which was all the opening Draco seemed to need, because he pressed on.

"You are, aren't you? Filthy scum, bringing primitive muggle weapons into a school like this-"

He was interrupted rather abruptly by the blast of a shotgun and his eyes went comically wide for a split second before he was smashed backwards off his chair by the force. The eyes of the class went first to Dean Winchester, calmly emptying and reloading the gun, then to Draco, expecting to find a bloody mess on the floor but being rather disappointed to see him groggy and moaning in pain but otherwise intact. Dean stalked up and pressed the barrels of the gun under the Slytherin's chin, forcing him to look up at him.

"You don't say a thing about Sammy's blood ever again, got that?" he asked, very calmly, and Draco carefully nodded, hatred burning in his eyes. Ron had his hands over his mouth in a desperate attempt to restrain his laughter, and it didn't quite work, but the teachers didn't seem to care.

"Good!" Dean said with a smile, turning around back to his brother, who gave him a look that Dean was fairly certain translated to 'I _said_ don't shoot the students' and resumed the lesson as though nothing had ever happened.

"So, the shotgun is loaded with rock salt, which is an excellent segue into our first lesson. Lots of supernatural creatures are vulnerable to salt..."

Once the lesson was done, the still slightly shell-shocked students filed out into the hall, Draco remaining uncharacteristically silent. Ron was the first to speak, sounding delighted.

"They're absolutely mad!"


	5. Chapter 5

**Hey, so, I got a couple people who were talking about how Dean would never shoot a fifteen-year-old boy and you're absolutely right. He would never shoot a fifteen-year-old human boy, but these are witches and wizards and he's never encountered any that aren't horrible (except that one cop? maybe?), and we all know how Dean feels about the vast majority of monsters, witches included ('if it's supernatural, we kill it'). Plus, there's the fact that he thought Draco was talking about Sam's demon blood, and not only knew about it but was making fun of him for it. Plus, the gun was only loaded with salt, so it's not like it would actual injure him besides hurting. Also, I sort of had to do it to set up some conflict, because there's a whole bunch of conflict gets eliminated by not having Umbridge in the story.**

 **Anyways! On to the actual story! And can I just say, WOW, this story is already way more popular than I thought it would be, so thanks to each and every one of you lovely folk for reading!**

~o~

Harry Potter was frustrated. He was very, very frustrated, and it seemed his friends were having the exact same trouble as him. No one believed Voldemort was back. The lies being spread by the Daily Prophet and the furious attempts by the Ministry of Magic to quash the story weren't exactly helping matters, either. Luckily, the two new Defense teachers, despite being terrifying and probably insane (but still not half as bad as some of their previous teachers, cough Quirrel cough Mad-Eye), were at least willing to talk about it.

Too bad they already seemed in danger of being fired. After the one had shot Draco (but it was only rock salt!), Harry had overheard a conversation between the aforementioned blonde-haired Slytherin and Professor Snape during Potions class, before he got distracted by frantically trying to make sure his potion didn't violently explode and turn everyone in the room into trees.

"He shot me!" Draco said, practically seething. Harry was fairly sure he was trying to whisper, but was furious enough that his voice was very loud and pitched very high. He was certain at least half the room was joining him in listening in.

"And which Professor was this, again?" Snape had asked in his standard drawl.

"One of the new Defense teachers. The short one," Draco had huffed, and Snape was about to say something else but then Harry's attention was caught by his potion dangerously bubbling and starting to turn brown and had to scramble to add the bloodroot, and by the time he looked back Draco was back in his seat, still looking downright murderous.

There was also that homework in OWL year was simply hell.

(He'd said this aloud to Ron in one of the hallways while passing the Winchesters and both stopped dead in their tracks for a moment, frantically casting their eyes around before continuing on a little faster than before. "That was weird," Harry said to Ron.)

They already had a pile of homework in every class except Defense being delayed even further by Quidditch tryouts and practice for both Harry and Ron plus Hermione making hats for the house elves and Ron and Hermione still had their new prefect duties to attend to, too. Not to mention that his scar had taken to flaring up with sudden pain almost daily and at the most inopportune moment.

Yeah. This year was going just great so far.

~o~

"You must be out of your mind," Snape hissed, pacing back and forth around the confines of the Headmaster's office with his cloak billowing dramatically behind him. "He shot a student. I'm honestly shocked the Malfoys haven't lodged a personal complaint."

"I understand that Mr. Malfoy was being very rude at the time of the incident," Dumbledore said mildly, shuffling through some papers on his desk.

"And this justifies reckless endangerment, Headmaster? I think not. They should be fired immediately before they do serious damage. There is a reason we never hire Muggle teachers, even those that do know about our world, and hunters are exponentially worse. There are better options for the position."

"I'll take that under advisement."

~o~

It was near the end of their first week of teaching that a little Ravenclaw second year asked the bombshell question.

"Is it true you're Muggles?"

The two Winchesters exchanged a bewildered look. "What the hell is a Muggle?" Dean whispered furiously, while Sam could only shrug and shake his head.

Seeing their confusion (which seemed to be rather telling in and of itself), the little Ravenclaw clarified: "Someone without magic."

Realization dawned in the two brothers' eyes. "Ohhh. Huh. Yeah, I guess we are. Unless-"

He turned to Sam with a questioning look on his face, but his younger brother was already shaking his head. "I don't count."

"Then yes," Dean answered, turning back to the students, and the entire class suddenly broke out into shocked and scandalized chatter. Dean glanced back over to Sam, who looked just as confused as Dean felt.

"Is that a big deal or something?"

~o~

"Did you hear?" Lavender Brown piped up from seemingly out of nowhere, and an already jumpy Harry started so badly he almost spilled his inks all over the essay he was writing (Snape, properties of porcupine quills, a foot and a half).

"Hear what?" he asked once he had calmed his racing heartbeat sufficiently to hold a conversation.

"You know, about the new Defense teachers?" she asked eagerly, and Harry had to wrack his brain to try and remember if he had, in fact, heard anything about them beyond some of the ridiculous rumors that had been circulating since their arrival, and eventually decided that no, he hadn't.

"No, I don't think I did," he said, curious in spite of himself. After a week they still knew next to nothing about the new teachers beyond that a) they were brothers, b) they focused on more practical solutions and weapons instead of spells, and c) they weren't afraid to say Voldemort's name.

She glanced furtively from side to side, like she was about to share a big secret, then said, "They're _Muggles_."

Harry frowned, more than a little disbelieving. "Really? Why would Dumbledore hire them, than?"

She shrugged, bouncing back from where she had leaned in to whisper in his ear. "I don't know! That's what I'm trying to find out."

"Oh. Um... good luck, then," he said awkwardly and returned to writing his essay, or tried to, but his mind was abuzz with questions.


	6. Chapter 6

Getting asked 'are you really Muggles?' every other class period (usually by one of the curious kids in blue or the sneering ones in green) got tiresome real quick. Dean ended up smashing his head against a desk every time the question was asked, and it was (usually) quickly dropped. He was very tempted to just announce it at dinner if it would make them shut up.

They'd started the year with a unit on ghosts, which was easy and common enough. Apparently, magical ghosts almost never became vengeful spirits, because the magic in their soul kept it from decaying or something like that. They'd even manage to coerce one of the ghosts, a former teacher, into helping with a demonstration.

"Anything to advance education," he'd said with a dopey smile, and Dean might have taken a little too much pleasure demonstrating the effects of salt and iron on him but he hadn't hunted anything in two weeks and he was getting twitchy.

~o~

It took a while before the students began noticing them, because they were usually tucked away in deep shadows and out-of-the-way crevices and corners, but every year some first years made it their quest to explore all of Hogwarts (even if they never succeeded, for example none of them had found the Chamber of Secrets) and so eventually they tripped over one of the new five-pointed stars painted onto the ceiling with what looked a lot like spray paint.

Harry had eventually asked Professor McGonagall about the various occult symbols appearing around the school looking a lot like Dark magic and asked if maybe some students were doing graffiti, but she just got on a face like she'd smelled something bad and said some faculty had gotten permission from Dumbledore to 'deface the halls in the name of safety.'

Harry was going to point out that defacing something in the name of safety seemed quite reasonable to him, especially if they were protecting against Voldemort (he wasn't sure if they were, but it was a logical assumption), but took another look at her face and decided to keep silent. He wondered if it was the new Muggle Defense teachers, the Winchesters, who'd done it and decided that it probably was, considering one of the largest symbols in the whole school was right above their classroom door.

Harry was getting more and more curious about them, so despite his better judgement and Hermione's warnings that it might be intercepted, he penned a letter to Sirius, outlining the situation; about the Ministry and no one believing him about Voldemort's return. He also put everything he knew about the Winchesters: their names, that they were Muggles, the strange methods and mysterious symbols. Maybe Sirius might know something.

He addressed the letter to 'Padfoot,' tied it to Hedwig's leg and watched anxiously as she flew off.

~o~

Later that night, Sam and Dean Winchester were hiding angel warding along the walls, usually behind the paintings (which usually had quite a lot to say about being 'manhandled'), and carrying on a discussion about whether angel banishment sigils still worked if painted in dried blood and whether it would be worth it to hide some of those around too.

"They don't believe in angels, you know," Sam commented, ignoring the indignant squeak of the painting he was holding up while Dean traced Enochian onto the wall. "Or demons."

His brother's hand slipped and drew a long line of pencil down the wall, ruining the complex pattern, which in turn caused a longer string of hushed profanities. Sam sighed and passed him an eraser. "The point being, if someone found an angel sigil done in blood on the wall, they wouldn't recognize and and they would probably lose it and think it was Dark magic or something."

"I think the bigger problem here is that that means this entire place is completely defenseless against both angels and demons," Dean muttered as he fixed the pattern. "I mean, I can kind of understand angels, they've been cooling their heels up in heaven for the last thousand years, but demons have been around this whole time. How can a bunch of witches not believe in demons?"

Sam shrugged, making the painting shift and prompting another complaint from the old lady inside the frame. "Beats me."

"So none of these kids have the slightest idea how to protect themselves from either. What if one of our enemies follows us here? It'd be a massacre!" Dean said, unintentionally raising his voice from a whisper to an almost-shout over the course of the conversation.

"Dude," Sam said with a small smile, "are you worried about them?"

"No. Shut up. Bitch."

"Jerk."

~o~

Sirius's response letter was worrisome, to say the least. He talked about Voldemort, the Ministry's newfound paranoia about Dumbledore raising an army and the fact that they had been lobbying for one of their own for Defense teacher before he got to the information about the Winchesters.

'Now, this is very interesting,' the letter read. 'I asked around a bit, and apparently Sam and Dean Winchester are hunters, rather infamous in magical circles. Hunters are Muggles that have learned about the existence of magical creatures. The Ministry can't regulate them without revealing themselves, so they just hate them, which is reason enough to like them already without the fact that they deal with a whole bunch of our problems for us.'

'The Winchesters might be some of the best hunters in the world. Some of the stories about them... be careful, pup. Hunters are known to hunt witches, too.'

-Padfoot

Harry read the letter twice, then burned it in the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room before seeking out Ron and Hermione and telling them what Sirius had discovered, though they were careful to call him 'Padfoot' in the crowded common room.

"But I don't understand," Hermione said, her brow furrowed. Harry knew she absolutely hated when she didn't understand something. "Why would Dumbledore hire them? They must be a danger to the students."

"Is no one else freaking out about the fact that there are apparently a whole bunch of Muggles that know about us and hunt us?" Ron asked, his voice slightly hysterical. "I thought this was exactly why we were a secret!"

A few other Gryffindors were starting to cast worried glances their way, and Harry and Hermione frantically hushed their friend. "We'll figure it out," Harry said, but he was sure a note of uncertainty had crawled into his voice.

~o~

Across the sea, in America, an angel in a trench coat with his mind firmly under another's hold was hunting and torturing demons that were seeking out one of Lucifer's crypts, possessing people and digging and digging and digging. He came across a demon chained up in a bathroom with black eyes and healing scars and bleached-blonde hair who gave him a lazy smile, teeth painted red, and said, "Hi, Clarence. Took you long enough."


	7. Chapter 7

The next week brought with it a new lesson in Defense Against the Dark Arts. This time, they were going over vampires, and Dean took great pleasure in describing decapitation to a class of frightened third years, complete with machete in hand. Sam went out of his way to explain that it was possible for vampires to live off donated or animal blood without killing humans, and described Benny and Lenore as examples, complete with the sad ending of Lenore's story.

A tentative Hufflepuff slowly raised their hand. "Are they... um, aren't they weak to garlic? And the sun?"

"No," Dean said immediately. "Well, the sun, but it only slows them down. If you're holding garlic when a vampire comes at you, they'll just see it as seasoning on the main course. Crosses and wooden stakes don't do a damn thing either. Only thing that does-" Sam tossed him a vial full of a murky red liquid and he held it up for the class to see, "-is Dead Man's Blood. It's poisonous to them."

"Blood is poisonous to vampires?" a Gryffindor asked, face twisted in confusion, and Dean nodded.

"Well, blood from dead people," Dean amended. "It's why vampires have to always be sucking on fresh meat instead of looting cemeteries like ghouls."

Both brothers winced at the mention of ghouls and Dean muttered something under his breath that was definitely not classroom-appropriate, earning them a few strange looks from their students. One of the braver Gryffindors slowly raised her hand.

"What are ghouls?"

~o~

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were outside the door of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, one of the Weasley twins' Extendable Ears fed through the crack between wood and stone, listening intently to the Winchesters talk after the third year Hufflepuff and Gryffindor class had silently filed out after receiving a rather graphic description of what, exactly, a ghoul was- and more importantly, what they ate.

Ron turned slightly green overhearing it, and had to hand the Ear off to Hermione, who was now listening and repeating the conversation back to her two best friends.

 _There was a meaty thunk, like someone punching something heavy and solid._

 _"You alright?"_

 _"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. It's just..."_

 _"Adam?"_

 _"Because of me, Sammy. He's down there because I was so damn stubborn. If I..."_

 _"If you'd what? Said yes? Let Michael walk around in your meatsuit? Adam would still be dead, dude, and half the world along with him."_

 _"He'd be in Heaven, though. He should be in Heaven."_

 _A sigh. "I know."_

Footsteps started towards the door and the Golden Trio scrambled away, hurrying down the hallway and ducking around the corner as Dean Winchester reached and opened the door, trying to stay absolutely silent and still and calm their racing heartbeats until the other brother beaconed him back in to look at some sort of 'warding.'

~o~

The moment Castiel laid a hand on the angel tablet, it burned Naomi's poisonous influence out of his mind in a shower of holy Grace. Meg dove for cover and shielded black eyes as the room was filled with a blindingly bright light and a high-pitched whine that died down after about a minute.

Castiel was all of a sudden _there_ , in his own mind and under his own control, and it took him a moment to readjust to this before remembering where he was and hurriedly stuffing as much of his Grace back into his vessel as he possibly could. His bright blue eyes blinked open and for the first time in too long, he was the only one looking out of them.

Meg levered herself up from the floor, blinking spots out of her eyes and shaking the ringing out of her ears. "Clarence?" she asked, just a tremor of uncertainty betraying her ordinarily smooth voice, but the angel didn't seem to even notice, instead cocking his head in confusion and staring at her until she started to feel a little uncomfortable.

(It was still way better than when she had to play nurse.)

"Meg?" he asked, his voice slow and confused. "What...?"

Meg's eyes flickered black and she swore under her breath as she sensed Crowley's approach just outside of the warehouse. Castiel barely seemed to notice, which was more than a little worrying. Not that she was actually that concerned about his wellbeing or anything, it was just nice to have an angel on her side.

Yeah. She didn't buy it either.

"Not now, Clarence," she almost snapped over her shoulder. "We've kinda got bigger problems."

"Meg," he repeated, a bit more focused and urgent this time. That was good. "Do you know where the Winchesters are?"

"You _don't_?" she asked, incredulous for a moment. "I thought you kept them on leashes, way you're always sitting on their shoulders."

He looked confused, then opened his mouth, only to close it again and narrow his eyes, his angel blade sliding out of his sleeve, when Crowley entered the small stone room, two demons in bulky meatsuits on his heels.

"Fuck," Meg muttered.

The next few minutes were a blur of motion and flashing silver blades. Ordinarily, an angel against any two or three demons would be a short fight, but this was a weakened and disoriented angel, and one of the demons was the King of Hell. All of a sudden, there was a sickening ' _shhhk_ ' sound and Crowley, with that maddening smirk of his, yanked his stolen angel blade out of a gash in the angel's side spilling blood and Grace. The angel tablet dropped out of his hand and skittered across the floor, and Meg made a dive for it, barely snatching it up before Crowley got it.

She didn't even really know what it was, really, just that Crowley wanted it and if Crowley wanted something it was generally in her own best interests to keep it as far away from him as humanly (demonly?) possible.

"Meg," the angel gasped. "Do you have the tablet?"

"Yeah," she said, focused almost entirely on the approaching demons, scrambling backwards until she was pressed against the wall. Some of the wards painted and carved into it sizzled when she touched them.

"Hold on," he ground out, taking a secure hold of her shoulder, and she obediently locked her fingers around the engraved stone (she wasn't known for her obedience, especially to goody-two-shoes angels, but desperate times). A moment later, there was nothing there but empty air and the sound of flapping wings.

~o~

In the underground labyrinthine headquarters of the Ministry of Magic, a woman with a pinched face and wide mouth dressed head-to-toe in screaming hot pink was pacing, her heels clicking endlessly against the stone floor. Her pink-painted lips were pursed tightly together in a way that made her look like she was always about to tell someone off (which she was) and she was frustrated. Very frustrated. The Minister had promised her the Defense Against the Dark Arts professorship. _Promised_.

And what sort of a man went breaking his promises so easily? She shook her head disapprovingly. No man at all, in her mind. It was a shame, too, because it would have been a mutually beneficial arrangement. She received a position of genuine power at one of the most prestigious wizarding schools on Earth and Fudge's paranoia would be assuaged.

Eventually, the door opened, and she immediately stomped inside, preparing her righteous fury, only to be cut off before she started by the next words out of Fudge's mouth.

"Hogwarts High Inquisitor."

 **Okay, so, for those that don't know, the scene with Meg and Cas set during the Supernatural episode Goodbye Stranger. I edited it a lot for story purposes and because in this version, the Winchesters aren't there. Also, I love Meg and I didn't want her to die.**


	8. Chapter 8

**So, someone asked if Harry would have already known they were Muggles after the Draco and 'mudblood' incident, and the answer is no. The school more or less assumed they were Muggleborns after that, not Muggles, and the more elitist Slytherins kept shooting them dirty looks and one particularly loudmouthed sixth year tried to call them out on it, but they were just kinda confused.**

 _"Muggles... are the not-magical people, right? She's asking if Mom and Dad were magical?"_

 _"Dude, can you imagine Dad in one of those pointy hats?"_

 _At which point they both collapsed in laughter at the shared mental image._

 **Anyways, this story is now officially my most reviewed story, so yay! Enjoy the chapter!**

~o~

"So, shojo are fun monsters," Dean was saying in a cheerful way that made approximately seventy percent of the current Defense Against the Dark Arts class seriously question his sanity, because really, fun monsters? That seemed as much of an oxymoron as a cowardly Gryffindor or unfriendly Hufflepuff. His brother, flipping through books in the back of the room, sighed as though this was something they had disagreed on before, and he had eventually given up. Dean waited, silent and expectant, for a few moments until a Ravenclaw fifth-year raised a cautious hand.

"Fun how?" the auburn-haired girl squeaked out. Trust a Ravenclaw to get a desire for knowledge past obvious fear.

"Glad you asked. They're fun because you've got to be drunk to see them," Winchester explained, shaking a half-empty bottle of whiskey as a demonstration. One had to wonder how he'd even gotten it, as all alcoholic beverages were supposed to be banned on school grounds. "Unfortunately-"

Another sigh from his brother.

"-or fortunately, depending on who you ask," Dean amended, "shojo are really rare. They're hardly ever seen outside of Japan, but since magic is like a freakin' magnet for other nasty stuff, you should probably know how to kill 'em anyways. Samurai sword blessed with spring water by a Shintoh priest. A sushi chef also works, in a pinch. There's also- agh!"

He clapped a hand to his left shoulder, wincing in pain. Smoke curled up from between his fingers, and his brother was instantly at his side. A few of the students were already preparing _Aguamenti_ charms when their teacher's pained expression abruptly eased and Sam pried his other hand away to reveal an untouched shirt. No fire, but Sam rolled up the short sleeve to check the skin underneath and the class caught a collective glimpse of a red, raised handprint burned into his shoulder. There was a hurried, hushed discussion between the two professors, then Sam took Dean's place at the front of the room, letting his brother limp back to the stacks of books and weapons piled around the teachers' desks, kneading his burn.

Sam started talking about something called an okami, but at that point only a few students were listening. Most of their eyes were still following Dean, who almost seemed to be praying.

~o~

"Ugh," Meg said, spitting a few stray strands of bleached-blonde hair out of her mouth and silently cursing Crowley in several different languages, including a few that no living humans spoke anymore. The torture she could handle- she had trained under Alistair, after all, and as Dean Winchester could attest, he preferred a more... hands on approach to teaching. Hands on in this case meaning his hands on your internal organs. Crowley had nothing on that creepy old lecherous bastard. So yeah, she could handle the torture.

The hair, though? That was just adding insult to injury.

She was distracted from imagining various creative tortures for the so-called King of Hell when a groan sounded from her side and she rolled over to face a quickly-awakening Castiel, wincing when the movement aggravated a few of the many fresh cuts and scabs Crowley had left her, and almost fell off the roof they were apparently on, giving herself an entirely too vivid look off the edge. Then she did a double take down at the streets entirely too far below them- specifically, which side the cars were driving on- and let out a low whistle.

"Clarence, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

The angel hoisted himself on his hands and sat next to her on the edge of the roof, following her line of sight and looking down at the foot traffic. "No," he agreed, "we appear to be in Inverness, Scotland. Although we departed from California, not Kansas."

"It's a- you know, never mind. What the hell happened back there?" she asked, suddenly remembering to be confused and angry instead of exasperated at the angel's complete and utter pop culture ineptitude. "I almost got torched alive when you turned on the Heaven light! A little warning might have been nice!"

Castiel looked down at his shoes, looking for all the world like the kid that broke the cookie jar, and Meg was seized by a sudden and irrational desire to give him a hug. "I apologize, Meg. I was... not in control of my actions."

She frowned, drawing mental connections between his cold behavior earlier and his befuddlement after touching the rock, adding two and two to arrive at a very unpleasant four. "Well, then who was?"

He grimaced. "One of my sisters. Naomi."

"Your... another angel?" At his nod of confirmation, she let out a whoosh of breath. "Jesus. You have one fucked up family, Clarence, you know that?"

He nodded. "Dean has expressed similar sentiments. But yes, Naomi was seeking the tablet to keep it from Crowley's grasp. You still have it?" he asked, a note of urgency entering his tone.

She blinked down at her numb fingers and confirmed to herself that yes, they were still locked around the rough slab of carved black stone. She carefully prized it free and held it up so they could both see it. "What's it say, anyways?"

He opened his mouth to answer, but it snapped shut with a wince and he pressed one hand to the side that she couldn't see. It came away bloody and she suddenly remembered Crowley's stolen angel blade and a nasty wet ' _shhhhhk_ ' sound. He caught her look and sighed. "It is healing, but the wound is serious, and the angel tablet needs to be hidden somewhere safe. That is why I was seeking the Winchesters. I tried to fly to their location, but something protected them from me." The angel looked very troubled, and Meg viciously stomped on the urge to hug him again. She was a demon, dammit.

"I have to find them-" he managed, making an admirable effort to stand up only for his legs to give out and very nearly send him tumbling off the roof. Meg grabbed his collar and yanked him back from the edge.

"Whoa there, Clarence," she scolded, and she absolutely _did not_ sound like a mother hen. "You're not flying anywhere just yet. Besides," she added, "you still owe me some relocated furniture."

He looked profoundly uncomfortable at that, and she collapsed into cackling laughter.

~o~

"Do you suppose it was a curse?" Hermione asked, flipping through a monstrously large spellbook. "A burning handprint... it doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard of..." she trailed off, sounding upset.

"It's okay, Hermione," Ron said, half soothing and half mocking. "The world won't end because there's something you don't know."

Harry was snickering along with him and Hermione was frowning down at them with mock seriousness before all three of them remembered Voldemort's rising and the very real and imminent threat he posed to the world, and sobered. Hermione broke the sudden silence with a frustrated sigh and the flutter of pages turning.

~o~

"So, to kill an okami, you need to stab it five times with a bamboo dagger blessed by a Shinto priest-"

"Seven."

"No, it's five."

"Pretty sure it's seven."

"Five."

"Seven."

"Five."

"Seven."

"Five."

"Bobby said it was seven."

"No, Bobby gave up and shoved it into a woodchipper."

~o~

 **So, to clarify- Cas can track Dean down even with the symbols on his ribs because of their 'profound bond.' It takes a lot out of him and hurts like hell, and he only got sort of in the area (so far as I can tell, Inverness is the closest city to where Hogwarts is supposed to be) because Hogwarts is Unplottable.**


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: I absolutely despise Dolores Umbridge.**

 **While I'm at it, I don't own Harry Potter or Supernatural. They belong to J K Rowling and (I think) Eric Kripke respectively. I have a whole long list of characters who never would have died if I did own them. *cough*CharlieSiriusMegFredBobbyLupin*cough***

 **Also, I have no idea where this story is going beyond some vague plans. I'm mostly just writing this for giggles, which is why the chapters aren't very long. Just so you know.**

~o~

Dolores Umbridge's office was pink. The walls were pink, the desk and the chair both pink, and there was a fresh bouquet of baby-pink roses resting on the painted wood. Even the women herself wore matching clothes and makeup, head to toe. Her bright magenta lips were pursed in a disapproving frown as she shuffled through the papers summarizing the current state of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Clearly the place had gone to ruin since her own graduation.

She knew that old fool couldn't be trusted to run a garbage dumb, let alone a prestigious academy where the brightest pureblood minds were raised and molded. She would have done it differently, of course, done it right, and once she was in charge that was exactly what she was going to do.

A paper airplane (she despised them- so _juvenile)_ alit on her desk and she unfolded it with a disapproving sigh, only for a cruel smile to dance across her wide, painted lips. Her latest bill had passed, further limiting those disgusting half-breeds. Honestly, she didn't know _what_ her predecessors had been _thinking_ , giving them as much free rein as they had. They couldn't be trusted.

Still wearing the self-satisfied smirk, she set the paper down, and picked up two thick files- the fools she'd been passed over for for the Defense Against the Dark Arts professorship- and began to read.

~o~

Harry wasn't really listening to the actual Defense class so much as he was watching the teachers. He'd be able to get the notes from Hermione later, even though she would probably pitch a fit about his inattentiveness, but Ron wasn't paying attention either. Ever since finding out that the Winchesters were Muggles, and then the worrying letter from Sirius, the trio had been on their guard.

What was confusing was that Sam, at least, seemed like a real teacher, all helpful and patient who tended to do more of the actual teacher things, like assigning homework (but it was never too hard) and helping them study. Dean was quite a bit less conventional, but just the other day Harry had seen him pick up a crying Hufflepuff first year who hurt her knee and give her a piggyback ride to the Hospital Wing.

They didn't seem at all like murderous witch and monster hunters. But, well, Professor Quirrel had seemed like a timid and faint doormat, and he'd had the most evil and powerful dark wizard to ever live growing out of his head, so looks could be deceiving. And as such, the three remained on their guard and spied on the Winchesters as much as they could without getting caught.

The brothers talked a lot, and either didn't realize someone might be listening in or didn't care, probably the latter, because they didn't bother to censor their conversations. They talked a lot about people named Cas (whose real name was apparently Castiel) and Crowley, whose name was usually accompanied by plenty of non-school friendly words. Hermione had lit up on actually having something firm to go off and bounced down to the library, charming a pass to the Restricted section out of Professor Sprout.

Approximately five hours later, she re-emerged, dark circles carved under her eyes and dust in her frizzy hair, holding a thick leather bound (Harry really hoped that was leather) book.

"Bloody hell, Hermione," Ron swore. "You're a right mess."

The table shook a little when she dropped the book on it, and she immediately yawned and fell asleep. It seemed almost non-stop studying for the OWLs plus new prefect duties plus their new side project had finally knocked their friend flat. They shared a concerned look over her head, then gently eased the heavy book out from under the mane of frizzy hair.

 _A Complete Encyclopaedia of Heaven and Helle_ , the gold-leaf title proudly proclaimed.

~o~

Crowley, the King of Hell, was frustrated. And when Crowley was frustrated, people tended to die. This was why most of his assistants and retainers had fled the throne room immediately on seeing the dark look in his eyes, leaving him mercifully alone to think.

First he lost Moose and Squirrel- he hadn't heard so much as a peep from them in weeks. He didn't dare hope they had died, because... come on. They're the Winchesters. So instead, he'd been left at a dead end, and then he finally managed to track down their pet angel only for the feathered traitor to disappear with both the tablet and his favorite torture toy.

He beckoned a low-ranking demon back into the throne room and noted with pleasure that the subordinate was hesitant, scared. As he should be. It was about time he got some bloody respect around here, and they could start with _finding the bloody Winchesters!_

~o~

"The thing about rugaru is that they're just normal people. They can live perfectly normal lives for decades, get married, even have children," Sam explained, feeling an ache in his chest as he talked about someone else who was never going to have a normal life. "Eventually, they start to get hungry. Really hungry, and they can't ever seem to eat enough. The only thing that'll satisfy them is... well, human flesh. They'll hold out as long as they can, but sooner or later..."

A new picture clicked up onto the projector screen that the two new teachers had managed to nag Dumbledore into installing.

 _"They ought to know what the monsters look like," Sam had argued._

 _"Yeah, and we can't exactly bring in a dragon for show and tell," Dean had added, although if push came to shove they probably could._

A few of the more weak-stomached students had to look away from the photograph of a man, skin wormy and rotting, with blackish eyes and baring ruined, bloody teeth. "This is Jack Montgomery," Sam explained with a slightly mournful expression. "He was happily married. Pregnant wife. And, well... he took a bite."

"He's a pile of ashes now," Dean injected with a grimace. "Fire's the only thing that kills 'em."

~o~

"So Castiel is the name of an angel," Hermione explained, once she was sufficiently awake and articulate about three hours later. She was flipping through the pages and stopped on one listing dozens of archaic names arranged alphabetically, the top corners embossed with circular symbols, running a finger down it until she found the name she was looking for.

 _Ambriel_

 _Anael/Haniel_

 _Azazel (f)_

 _Balthazar_

 _Barachiel_

 _Cassiel/Castiel_

"So... what, one of the Professors' friends is named after an angel?" Ron asked, squinting at the tiny print.

"It's not a well-known one," Hermione replied doubtfully. "My mum and dad used to take me to church every Sunday and I'd never heard of it. It was only when he mentioned praying that I even had an idea where to look."

Harry, leaning over her shoulder, pointed at the third name down. Azazel. "What's the 'f' there mean?" he asked curiously.

She flipped back to check the index at the front of the book before frowning. "Fallen."

Ron pointed at the symbol in the corner, one that looked with a circle but surrounded with small zigzags and triangles and with a jagged shape in the middle. "I've seen that before," he said, craning his neck to get a better look. "That's one of the ones that's been showing up on the walls and such."

Harry raised an eyebrow and examined the symbol along with his best friend. "Really? What is it?"

Hermione consulted the index again and blinked. "An angel banishment sigil."

~o~

Dolores Umbridge's shrill shriek when she reached a certain bit of information about Sam and Dean Winchester was heard throughout the entire underground headquarters of the Ministry of Magic.

 _"Muggles?"_

The Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, looked up with a start when his door slammed open and what appeared for all intents and purposes to be a toad in pink stormed in, heels clicking aggressively against the floor. He blinked rapidly a few times and the image readjusted itself to the indignantly furious face of Dolores Umbridge. Which wasn't that much of a difference, really.

"Did you know about this?" she hissed, slapping a thick folder onto the table. Fudge stared at it and made no move to pick it up.

"About what?" he asked warily.

 _"Muggles!"_ she screeched, jabbing the folder with a stubby finger for emphasis. "Dumbledore's new teachers are _muggles!_ This has gone too far, Cornelius. I know you worry about Dumbledore's schemes even more than I do. Leaving him unattended is only making the situation worse."

She took a deep breath. "I'm going to Hogwarts to fix this... _disease_ myself."


	10. Chapter 10

**Hey! So, a review pointed out that this story starts very similarly to another one- Harry Potter and the Hunters of the Dark Arts by D.K. Dracona. I have read it and I'm aware of that and have gone out of my way to try and make my story as different as I can from that one, but I couldn't find a better way to set up the start than with the Starks.**

 **So, a guest asked two questions:**

 **1) Will you bring people back to life?**  
 **2) Will time travel be involved?**

 **No, I won't be bringing anyone canonically dead so far back to life, although characters that haven't died yet may survive in this story (Meg, for example), and I'm not planning on including time travel but you never know.**

 **Also, ten chapters already! Wow! I kinda can't believe the amount of support this story has gotten, so thank you all very very much!**

 **Anyways! On with the story!**

~o~

"But why would anyone want to banish an angel?" Hermione asked as Ron led them through the halls to where he'd seen the sigil from the book. "It doesn't make _sense_."

Hermione hated when things didn't make sense.

Ron took a sharp left turn and came to a stop in front of a fading painting of an old witch in a rocking chair. It was slightly crooked, and a reddish-brown line peeked out past the frame. He propped it up, ignoring a weak protest of _'oh, not again'_ from the subject of the painting, revealing the same circular pattern they'd seen in the pages of the book.

Harry blinked, reached out, and touched the jagged lines. The rusty brown paint flaked off on his fingers and then he made a rather undignified noise and frantically brushed his hand off on his robes. "Is that blood?"

"Oh, bloody hell," Ron breathed.

~o~

That night, there was someone new at supper. A short, squat toad of a woman dressed all in obnoxiously bright pink sitting at Dumbledore's right hand, where McGonagall usually sat. Neither McGonagall nor Dumbledore looked particularly happy about this. For all her cheery bright colors, the woman's eyes were startlingly harsh and cold, and when they landed on Harry he shuddered.

Before the meal began, Dumbledore stood up and introduced the woman. "Students, before we begin, I'd like you to please welcome Dolores Umbridge, our new representative from the Ministry of Magic-"

"Hogwarts High Inquisitor," the woman corrected, her tones crisp and clipped. "I've been sent to investigate some... disturbing rumors circulating lately and ensure you children are receiving the best education possible."

She sent a dirty look at the Winchester brothers. Sam was ignoring her- Dean gave her a shit-eating grin and a wink, which made her face turn approximately as pink as her clothes. Harry was secretly hoping she'd pop a blood vessel- he already hated her. He didn't doubt one of the 'disturbing rumors' she'd been sent to quell was Voldemort's rising.

Sure enough, she continued to speak for almost half an hour as the food got cold and students (and teachers) sent it longing looks, as they couldn't eat until she was done talking.

(Several Gryffindors, notably Fred and George, decided to override this commandment in favor of their growling stomachs and eat under the table.)

She talked about the lowered hiring standards at Hogwarts (here she sent another nasty glare at the Winchesters, who didn't even seem to notice, as though they'd been stared down by much scarier things than a toad in pink), about several... changes that were going to be made (no more 'frivolous' extracurricular activities, for one) and, finally...

"You have been informed that a certain dark wizard is at large once again. This is a lie."

Harry desperately wanted to stand up and shout that it was true, that Voldemort was back, but Ron and Hermione's restraining hands on his arms held him back and he had to just settle for glaring daggers at her and her smug smile, like the cat that ate the canary, and wishing looks could kill.

~o~

"I bet she's a demon," Dean said.

"She's not a demon," Sam replied without looking up.

"Have you ever met a person that nasty before? No way, she's possessed," Dean objected, then paused to answer his own question. "Well, there was that waitress-"

Sam clapped his hands to his ears in protest. "Dude. No. I don't want to hear about your sexcapades."

"I'm just saying. If she could be possessed, so could Strawberry Shortcake's ugly grandma out there. Besides," he added with a grin, "you know all about your hookups being possessed, don't you?"

Sam blushed. "Shut up. I wasn't thinking straight. You were dead."

(There was a small surprised squeak from outside of the door. Neither of the brothers noticed.)

"And anyways," Sam continued, "if she was a demon- which she's not- she would have gotten stuck under the devil's trap we put in the entry hall."

"Meg got out of a devil's trap when she was possessing you," Dean pointed out, and Sam winced.

"I'd rather not talk about that ever again."

Neither of them noticed the Extendable Ear trailing under the door.

~o~

"Maybe they're dark wizards," Ron suggested once they had all reconvened in the Gryffindor common room around the fire. Their homework was piled around them (Hermione, being Hermione, was still working on a lengthy Arithmancy essay even while holding a conversation with them) and Ron was shredding the latest _Daily Prophet_ into the flames. "Doing dark blood magic and keeping angels away."

"They're _Muggles_ ," Hermione reminded him, sounding irritated like she always did when the facts didn't add up. "They said so themselves, and S-Padfoot confirmed it, didn't he? And anyways, Dumbledore wouldn't hire dark wizards."

There was a lull in the conversation during which Harry was fairly certain they were all thinking of Quirrel and Mad-Eye (or his imposter, at least) and possibly Snape, too.

"Dumbledore wouldn't hire dark wizards on purpose," Hermione amended, sounding a bit less sure of herself.

"Well, maybe he doesn't know," Ron challenged, warming to the idea. "Why else would they be talking about possession and demons and all that? They said Professor Winchester... um, the short one, his brother said he died."

"Impossible," Hermione immediately objected. "There's no currently known spell that can restore the dead to life. And demons aren't real."

"Maybe there is," Ron argued, "And we just don't know about it 'cause it's dark magic."

"No, I mean it's really not possible. It would take more magic than the human body can hold. The energy transfer alone would-"

Harry and Ron both tuned out the ensuing lecture and shared a worried look, before their attention was caught by an owl flapping at the window. Harry squinted. "Is that Hermes?"

"Yeah, but why would Percy be writing?" Ron wondered aloud, already easing the window open to allow the bird in, where it settled on his shoulder and promptly began to preen its feathers, sticking out a leg with a sheaf of paper tied to it. He carefully undid the knots and the owl took off through the window again the moment it was relieved of its burden. He unrolled the paper and Harry watched over his shoulder as he read it. Hermione, having at some point realized they were no longer listening to her, moved over to them and skimmed the writing too.

It wasn't too long before Ron started making noises of disgust at Percy's shameless pushing of the Ministry's propaganda and disapproval of their family. Harry just glanced away from the words, feeling a pang in his heart. Hermione pressed her lips together tightly and frowned.

 _'Seriously, Ron, you do not want to be tarred with the same brush as Potter.'_

 _'It may be that you are afraid to sever ties with Potter- I know that he can be unbalanced and, for all I know, violent.'_

Harry, his voice trembling slightly, tried to act like he thought the letter was a joke (even though they all knew it wasn't and that made it much worse), but before he could even say anything else Ron was already ripping the letter to shreds and tossing it into the fire, his face contorted in anger.

 _"He is - the world's - biggest - git!"_

~o~

 **I didn't want to quote the full text of the letter, since it's in the book anyways, but you can read it here with the first two sets of parentheses removed: wiki/Percy_Weasley%27s_letter_to_Ronald_Weasley_(1995)_II**


	11. Chapter 11

**This update took a bit longer than usual, I'm sorry. With the end of the school year coming up I've been super busy. I'll try to keep updates pretty regular, but they'll probably still be slowing down a bit here.**

~o~

An demon drags an unconscious angel into a cheap motel room.

There's a punch line there somewhere, Meg thought irritably as she bundled the injured form into bed (only one, because she didn't _sleep_ , stupid smirking pimply teenager behind the front desk). When did she end up playing nursemaid anyways?

' _Welcome to the team... Nurse Masters.'_

Oh, right. That. Fuck.

But she was stuck here until her feathery transportation got back on his feet (teleportation, especially long-range, was tricky for even higher-up demons. Crossroads demons were the only ones who could really pull it off, the unholier-than-thou pricks) and managed to track down Moose and Squirrel.

Oh Go- Sa- _somebody_ , Crowley was rubbing off on her.

She sighed, dragged a chair over to the side of Clarence's bed, propped her feet up and opened a trashy tabloid.

~o~

Something about 'Inquisitor' Umbridge made Sam feel wary. He couldn't pin it down- maybe it was the dark glitter in her eyes that was far too reminiscent of the look demons got sometimes when others were suffering.

' _Sic 'em, boy!'_

 _'No stink of blood or sizzle of flesh or the wet flap of flayed skin...'_

Maybe it was the manipulative, power-hungry attitude reminded him entirely too much of Ruby, and wasn't that a disturbing thought.

Maybe it was the vaguely disgusted sideways glare that she kept shooting at them whenever they passed in the halls. He'd done some research after the 'mudblood' incident with the pale kid and found out that wizards could be nearly as bad as normal humans when it came to stupid prejudices, so that could be it.

Whatever it was, it was probably the same thing that made Dean determined to piss the woman off as much as humanly possible. Mostly middle-school pranks, the sort the two brothers used to pull on each other all the time, but the woman's eye twitched whenever she saw a rooster now (and apparently there was a whole story involving a giant snake and a possessed diary regarding exactly _why_ the school had so many roosters), so whatever it was it was effective. Not that Dean was the only one screwing with her, either- Sam was fairly certain he'd formed an unholy alliance with the two redheaded Gryffindor twins.

Sam figured that friendship was one best admired from a safe distance.

And yes, they were sure she wasn't a demon. He was about seventy percent sure Dean had been joking when he first proposed it, but after watching her for a few days they decided they had to test her just to make sure. They'd spiked her pumpkin juice with holy water (Sam was pretty sure Dean had snuck some laxatives in there too) and no screaming and burning had commenced. Unfortunately. They knew how to deal with demons- people were a whole different story. Demons at least had an excuse for being the way they were. People were just crazy.

And that was all without even mentioning the way she treated the students. Sam was pretty sure even some of the other teachers were at least a little scared of her, so he couldn't imagine what it was like for the students.

He sighed, and shook the thoughts out of his head as the class filed in- fifth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins, he remembered. Dean was sitting in his chair with his feet kicked up on the desk.

"Today we're talking about angels," Dean declared as soon as the class was fully present and seated, and Sam noted the frizzy-haired Gryffindor girl who'd gotten a perfect score on the last test jerking her head up from her notes in recognition. She elbowed the two boys next to her to attention- they looked half-asleep- and a moment later he recognized them as the three he and Dean were supposed to keep an eye on, according to Dumbledore.

"The first thing you need to know," Dean said, sounding serious for once, "is that angels are dicks. They are _not_ the fluffy-winged diaper-wearing babies you see on Hallmark cards- though some of them act like it sometimes."

Dean's voice changed a little bit in a way no one who hadn't grown up with him would have been able to even hear, and Sam knew he was worrying about Cas. They hadn't even seen the angel in months, ever since the botched rescue mission for Alfie the angel. Some way or another, Alfie'd ended up dead. Cas said he'd been compromised by Crowley and he'd been forced to kill him in self-defense, before vanishing with his empty vessel.

Cas was always terrible at lying.

"Angels are self-righteous bastards with no sense of collateral damage. If you see one coming, get the hell out of its way. They don't die easy, either- try to punch one and you'll break your hand."

He would know, too.

"There's pretty much no way us humans can kill an angel without one of these babies," Dean continued, pulling a four-sided angel blade from under the desk (of course he'd keep it close on hand) and holding it up for them to see. "This is an angel blade. You'll probably never get to use one, and if Fate is less of a bitch you'll never need one."

"There's ways to slow them down, though," Sam prompted in the pause that followed, looking up from the heavy leather textbook he was half-paying attention to ( _A Compendium of Mythical Creatures_ ).

"Yup," Dean agreed. "Holy fire is the most reliable- angels can't get out of it."

 _'So what, huh? You're just gonna leave me here forever?'_

"But you need to light it with holy oil, which is just a _bitch_ to find, so angel banishing sigils are a better bet, even though you need to draw them in blood." Sam clicked the projector on cue and brought up the symbol. The three- Potter and his two friends- were whispering animatedly among themselves now as Dean went through a short lecture on how to draw and activate it.

"Copy that down," Dean ordered. "Might save your life someday."

Once all the class had complied, he sighed and shook his head. "And all that's without even _getting into_ fallen angels."

Sam huffed a laugh without looking up. "And you know all about getting into fallen angels, don't you?"

"That... that was... shut up," Dean eventually decided before turning back to the class, whose heads had been following the exchange between the two brothers back and forth. "So, basically, there's two kinds of fallen angels- angels that fell to Earth, and angels that went a bit further. The first kind isn't so bad, and since they're basically human without their Grace, they don't usually pose any threat. The second kind... well, can any of you name a fallen angel? Not the devil, that's too easy."

Hermione's hand went up, and Dean nodded expectantly at her and she said a name that she'd found between the pages of an encyclopedia of Heaven and Hell.

"Azazel."

The leather textbook slipped out of Sam's hands and hit the floor with a heavy thud.

 _Cold Oak and yellow eyes and a knife through his spine and 'only one of you crazy kids is gonna make the cut!' and his heart thudding too loud pumping demon blood through his veins and-_

 _"Class dismissed!"_ he was vaguely sure he heard Dean shouting, practically shoving the students out of the room before his brother was kneeling in front of him and shaking him awake. "Hey, hey, Sammy, you're okay. You're okay, I'm okay and that bastard is dead, okay, Sammy?"

He blinked owlishly and realized he was on the floor. Huh.

"Yeah, Dean," he said, letting his brother haul him to his feet. "I'm okay."

~o~

 **The quotes in italics are, in order:**

 **The doctor in The Born-Again Identity (7.17)**

 **Lilith in No Rest for the Wicked (3.16)**

 **Alistair in Heaven and Hell (4.10)**

 **Gabriel in Changing Channels (5.08)**

 **Also, Sam's bit about understanding demons but people being crazy is paraphrased from something Dean says in The Benders (1.15). It seems like an opinion they'd share.**

 **This was a very SPN-centric chapter and I'm sorry for that, we'll get more Harry, Ron and Hermione in here soon and Meg and Cas should show up soonish, too.**

 **And finally, holy shit I just realized how similar Umbridge and Naomi are.**


	12. Chapter 12

**Hey! I got a new side Tumblr for my writing! origami-writes will be mostly for updates on my current stories and receiving prompts, because prompts are fun. I can also use it to answer any questions instead of filling up my Author's Notes with them. Check it out! :)**

 **In other news, have the LONGEST CHAPTER TO DATE, WOOO!**

~o~

The seraph Naomi was not upset. No. Such emotions were beneath angels. They interfered with judgement.

She was perfectly calm.

Perfectly. Calm.

And if she was just a little bit frustrated, well, that was to be expected. After all, she'd been so close she could feel the angel tablet in Castiel's hands, already commanding him to execute the demon bitch he'd come with, and then-

( _A flash of light that_ burned, _not Grace, nothing angelic or demonic, something far older_ -)

Well. She was lucky all that had happened was being catapulted out of Castiel's mind and thrown across her office. Had she been a lesser angel, she likely would have been incinerated by the sheer cataclysmic power emitted by the Word of God.

But. She was. Perfectly. Calm.

She just had to think this through. There had to be a way. She just might have to get her hands a bit dirty.

So be it.

She clicked her fingers and a lesser angel materialized with the goblet, already filled to the brim with thick, rusty red liquid, tainting the air in her office with the stink of blood. She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat and carefully skimmed the surface with her vessel's perfectly manicured nails, pursing her lips in impatience until the fluid began to bubble.

"Crowley," she greeted tersely, her lips pressed into a thin line of annoyance. She could practically see his smug-snake smirk.

"Hello, darling."

~o~

Harry, Hermione, and Ron were bunched around the open encyclopedia, trying to figure out what had provoked such a reaction from their professor earlier that day while also working through their ridiculous homework load and discussing the tyranny of the Toad Inquisitor. They were currently poring over the page for Castiel, a much shorter entry than many of the others, only taking up about half a page.

"The angel of solitude, tears, and Thursday, who watches the events of the cosmos unfold from afar and presides over the deaths of kings," Hermione read aloud.

All of a sudden, the painting slammed open and shut again to admit the Weasley twins, who dove in and collapsed into a pile of silent hysterical giggles.

There was a beat, then the click-click-click of high heels approached down the hallway, and at an unspoken signal the entire common room went completely silent. Even the more rule-following Gryffindors silenced like a switch had been flicked, because everyone knew who was clacking down the hall and no one liked her. Even the Hufflepuffs, who generally found it hard to hate anyone, were testing their limits with her. Only the more opportunistic Slytherins even pretended to like Professor Umbridge.

The heels paused outside the portrait of the Fat Lady, waited... then turned and continued down the hall. Then there was a pause, a bellowing roar, and a scream ripped through the common. Then the clicking heels picked up again, noticeably faster, until they turned a corner and disappeared.

Ron turned to his brothers, his expression wavering between awe and horror. "What did you do?"

"Oh-" Fred (or maybe George) began with an utterly unconvincing innocent grin.

"-nothing," George (or maybe Fred) continued.

"We just had a talk-"

"-with Professor Winchester-"

"-the short one-"

"-and he suggested we use an alligator-"

"-something about a trickster and some sewers-"

"-so we did!" George (probably) concluded with a flourish.

It said a lot about the sort of shit Gryffindors in general and Fred and George in particular usually pulled that no one asked any more questions or even seemed particularly surprised.

Hermione ran her finger down the index of the book and flipped it open to Azazel's page. A detailed illustration of a pair of dirty yellow eyes blinked lazily, sending fear down Harry's spine. Even though they were a different color, something in them reminded him of Voldemort. He unconsciously rubbed the stinging cuts on the back of his hand, a painful reminder from his earlier detention with Umbridge.

"Azazel," Hermione read aloud. "The scapegoat."

"The what?" Ron asked, examining the book upside-down.

"The one who gets blamed," she explained. "A fallen angel and servant of Lucifer. According to legend, he taught humans warfare, deception, and... witchcraft."

"Magic?" Harry asked, thrown.

"Dark magic," Hermione corrected, shuffling through the musty parchment to the correct page. "Professor Winchester was talking about some of this during class today... according to lore, some angels fell all the way into Hell, and became the first demons. They're the ones that created dark magic... this Azazel was one of them."

~o~

At three in the afternoon the next day, a host of angels and demons only kept from full-out war by mutual fear of their respective superiors descended on Paradise Inn in Inverness, Scotland.

At three-oh-five, there was nothing left of the motel but an ashy grey crater.

~o~

It was a bit harder to pay attention in Defense Against the Dark Arts the next day. Not because they were all overworked and sleep-deprived (which they were), or because both of their professors seemed rather uncharacteristically quiet since the lecture on Angels the previous day (which they did), or because Trelawney's more recent rant about encroaching death had put them on edge (which it had), or because Ron was still distracted and upset by Percy's recent letter (which he was, even if he didn't admit it), or because Hermione was about two inches from a nervous breakdown due to stressing about her grades (which she was), or even because Harry himself had been having thrashing nightmares about Voldemort and searing pain in his forehead (which he was).

No, it was because Hogwarts High Inquisitor Dolores Umbridge was sitting prim and proper and pink in the back of the room, a blandly pleasant smile stretching her wide lips even wider and not quite distracting from the cold, predatory gleam in her eyes. She'd been making the rounds of all the classes, and today it was Defense. The two teachers were very pointedly not looking at her, and indeed seemed to be trying their damnedest to pretend she didn't exist.

On walking into the classroom, Harry got the distinct impression that he had stepped into a war zone. Umbridge was holding her quill (he still flinched a little when he saw it, and rubbed the back of his hand) like a sword, half an inch above the parchment- Dean had protectively edged between her and his brother and was frowning suspiciously across the room at her.

The three hurried to their seats before they could get caught in the crossfire- they may not know much about the Winchesters, but they definitely preferred them over Umbridge any day of the week.

"Alright," Dean started, once everyone was settled in their seats. "Today, we're talking about demons. First lesson is this: demons suck."

Umbridge faux-coughed from the back of the room. Hem hem.

"The thing about demons is that they possess people," Dean continued, slightly louder, speaking over the other teacher. "They used to be humans, but they need meatsuits to do anything. Same goes for angels. If an angel ever asks to possess you, say no," he added as an aside. "Anyways, what that all means is that any of you could be possessed right now if it wasn't for that devil's trap above the doorway there."

All of the heads in the room craned as one to see the geometric lines and shapes carved into the dark wood above the door.

"Demons can't get out of those," Dean said. "Once they're in-"

Umbridge coughed again, interrupting him, a sickly sweet condescending smile curling her lips. "Professor Winchester? I'm so sorry to interrupt your... _class_ ," she said with a sneer in her voice, "but it appears my assumptions about your dubious teaching abilities were correct. There is no such thing as demons."

Dean looked about ready to summon one himself just to prove her wrong, but he needn't have bothered, because just then a bright red handprint stood out through his shirt and he clapped his hand to his shoulder with a groan. Then the sound of fluttering wings brushed through the air and where there had been nothing there was a bloody angel in a trench coat, one hand fitting perfectly on the mark on Dean's shoulder and the other clamped tightly around Meg's leather-clad arm. There were scorch marks along the bottom of Castiel's coat and Meg's bleached-blonde hair was grey with ash.

Cas swayed and took a step back, Meg slipping out of his grip. "Dean. I apologize for your discomfort, this place is very heavily ward- _umph_."

Dean had grabbed the angel in a hug and squeezed the air out of him, effectively shutting him up. "What the hell, Cas?"

Meg, who didn't do well with emotions that didn't involve hatred and/or sex, rolled her eyes and began cleaning blood out from under her nails. Sam, ever the logical one, immediately checked to see if the warding hidden along the classroom walls was still intact to ensure nothing had followed the odd pair. By the time he circled back around, Dean was holding Cas by the shoulders and looking at the blood spattering his trench coat, forehead creased in a frown.

"Cas, what-"

" _What is this!_ " Umbridge shrieked, sounding slightly hysterical, shoving out of her seat and reaching for the wand at her waist as she stalked down the aisle. " _What is this... this madness?! How did you-"_

Castiel, cocking his head to one side and wearing an expression that read _what is this creature that is screaming at me_ , reached out and tapped her forehead with two fingers. She promptly collapsed gracelessly into a boneless, unconscious heap on the floor.

A few students cheered.

The angel turned to look at them curiously, as though only just now realizing that they had an audience. The Winchesters looked likewise startled, like they'd forgotten their students were still in the room. Luckily, Sam took pity on his brother and took charge.

"So, since our lecture on demons was rudely interrupted," here he sent a disapproving look at the snoring form of Inquisitor Umbridge, "your homework tonight is just to read about exorcisms. Class dismissed."

The class stayed frozen in their seats for a moment longer, stunned, until the younger Winchester brother, apparently used to dealing with shock, started gently herding them out the door.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione all exchanged looks and bolted for the common room.

~o~

 **We never learn Naomi's angelic rank in the show, but she appears to have similar authority and a matching superior asshole attitude to Zachariah, who is a seraph, so I'm just going to say she is one too.**

 **Lots of this is actual lore on Azazel and Cassiel, by the way, from their Wikipedia pages. It's actually pretty interesting reading.**


	13. Chapter 13

**So, someone asked if there was going to be Destiel in this fic. The answer is an uncertain no, because I tend to not write shippy stuff. I'm not good at it and sometimes I end up alienating readers who don't like that ship, so I think we'll just be sticking to canon levels of snark and shiptease.**

 **Also, I'm going to be going on vacation after school lets out for ten days, from about June 11 to the 21, so there won't be any updates around that time.**

 **And finally, this is filler. So much filler. I'm sorry.**

~o~

Dolores Umbridge woke up the next day in her own room at Hogwarts (redecorated pink, of course) with a ringing headache and a vague certainty that certain heretical and contradictory legends were in fact true.

She then wondered if maybe the extra work was getting to her. After all, it was hard, clearing all the filth and rabble out of Hogwarts, but someone had to do it, and who better than her, really? And if was worth it, to return the school to the shining pinnacle of pureblooded education it always should have been.

(With herself as headmistress, of course.)

She lay there for a few more minutes, indulging these fantasies, before she picked herself up and began her day. She did not notice that someone had taken full advantage of her unconsciousness the previous day and painted a luxurious mustache on her face with Uninvisible Ink.

(This was a product invented by the Weasley twins. It was visible to everyone except the wearer and was currently in the beta testing phase, which basically meant they gave it for free to anyone who promised to wreak havoc with it.)

No one bothered to tell her about it for five days.

~o~

Crowley was lounging on his throne, staring dispassionately down at the demon at his feet. It was a weak one- black eyes, only dead for a few decades so far, only held out for a couple weeks before he cracked. Pathetic. Cannon fodder, really, useless in the long run, but soldiers were soldiers were soldiers and he'd been going through an awful lot of them between those he'd sent off to hunt for the crypts (which kept dying) and those he'd sent off to hunt for Moose and Squirrel and their pet prophet (which also kept dying).

"Um. Your Highness?"

Oh, right. He was still talking. "What now?"

"Um. Message for you, sir. Um. From Heaven."

That damned stutter. You'd think having his tongue violently ripped out and dangled in front of him would have taught him to appreciate the thing.

~o~

"Hello, darling."

Naomi dearly wanted to bash her vessel's face against her desk.

"You failed," she forced out through clenched teeth, her words sharp and clear and cold as broken ice. "You said that your 'demon power' would catch them. It's bad enough I have to work with your filthy race-"

"That's not what you said in Mesopotamia."

Of course, he could never just let that go. The idea of utilizing one of the human expletives Castiel occasionally used drifted to mind unbidden, but she batted it away. It was bad enough she had to wear a human. She was not going to act like on the mud-crawlers as well.

" _Find them_ ," she hissed instead, and swatted the goblet aside in a rare show of emotion, snapping the connection like a taught string. The blood spilled across her desk and splattered against the wall, and for a moment she wondered idly who it came from.

~o~

Sitting by the fire and paging through the hefty Encyclopedia in an effort to find the answers their professors were certainly not going to provide while working through their homework had almost become a tradition by now. It wasn't even really that they were particularly worried about the intentions of their new professors anymore. They seemed to be genuinely concerned with their students safety, plus Umbridge clearly disapproved of them which was points to them so far as Harry was concerned.

This time was slightly different, if only because this time they were actually using the book for their actual homework instead of searching for answers like the fact-hungry vampire that Hermione could be sometimes. They were currently looking for information on exorcisms, and in this respect it appeared they'd gotten extraordinarily lucky, because they'd mined their book out of the library beforehand and didn't have to do looking for informational tomes, as opposed to their housemates who doing just that.

(Another point in the Winchesters' favor- they barely ever gave homework. Dean didn't give it period, and Sam, like today, usually only gave reading or things they hadn't had time to do in class.)

"What d'you suppose they were?" Ron eventually wondered aloud, breaking the steadfast silence on the two mysterious new arrivals.

"Who. Who they were," Hermione said without looking up.

"What. Aren't you the one always goin' on about how Apprating inside Hogwarts is impossible? An' they just showed up."

"Like magic," Harry added with a small smile and a snort.

" _Ah-ha_!" Hermione suddenly said triumphantly, jabbing a finger at the page.

 _'Angels disappear and reappear as a form of flight. This is oft-accompanied by the sound of fluttering wings_.'

"So... what, you think those two are _angels_?" Ron asked incredulously. "They looked like people! Don't angels have... y'know, wings and halos and such? Plus, the one was all bloody."

"It did sound like that, though, dinnit?" Harry pointed out idly. Honestly, he was distracted. The Winchesters and their mysterious guests were strange, sure, and potentially dangerous, but they really did seem nice enough and pretty much the first thing one of the visitors had done was to knock Umbridge out cold, which was why they had been enjoying a rare stretch of toad-free time since class. He knew he should probably be more worried about them than he was, and Sirius's warning fluttered in and out of his mind unbidden-

' _Be careful, pup_.'

-but Umbridge and the Ministry and Voldemort especially were just bigger threats, more immediate, more dangerous. The Winchesters were surely dangerous, but not to them and for the moment that was what mattered.

"You know, I've been thinking," Hermione commented ('that's a shocker,' Ron muttered under his breath), apparently having followed a similar train of thought, "none of the students are getting a proper defense against dark magics this year. The Professors are teaching all about beasts and monsters, and that's fine, but with Vo- with _You Know Who_ out there they should be trained, shouldn't they? At least enough so they can protect themselves."

Harry blinked thoughtfully. It did make sense. Hermione took his silence as a concession and continued on with the momentum of a train.

"I was talking to a bunch of other students who're interested," she offered. "So I was thinking we could meet up at the Hog's Head to talk about it."


	14. Chapter 14

**Blame finals, vacations, and Homestuck's magical time-suck abilities for the extreme lateness of this update where not much happens. But luckily, now it's summer break for real, and I have pretty much nothing to do, so updates should be faster, yay! Enjoy!**

~o~

The suite of rooms that Sam and Dean Winchester shared in the Eastern Tower of Hogwarts had suddenly doubled their occupancy. Two humans, an angel, and a demon were lounging on the pair of undersized couches. Dean kept shooting suspicious glares at Meg, who replied with blandly uninterested glances.

('How can you be cool with this, Sammy? She possessed you!'

'Dude, just hear them out, okay?')

Slowly, the frigid silence defrosted into a more genuine conversation, both sides sharing what they'd been doing over the past few months.

"Being tortured, mostly," Meg said, taking a long slug of whiskey out of a glass she'd stolen from Dean when he wasn't looking. "I got so damn sick of that fucking bathroom wall."

Cas awkwardly patted her shoulder before picking up the thread of conversation again. "I was... not in control of myself," he said haltingly. "One of my sisters, Naomi, she is in charge of... reforming disobedient angels. She had me searching for the angel tablet and... she wanted me to kill you, Dean."

He swallowed convulsively, and Dean had a moment to consider just how human the action was before he was crossing the room and pulling the angel into his second hug of the day.

"There's an angel tablet?" Sam asked from behind him, having apparently been the only one to pick the relevant information out of Cas's confession.

"Ah. Yes," the angel said as Dean returned to his spot on the opposite couch, pulling the carved stone from the inside of his trench coat. "They want it back... very badly. It frightens them."

"The demons want it, too," Meg piped up as Cas passed the tablet over to the Winchesters for inspection.

"Oh, fuckin' perfect," Dean announced in sarcastic exasperation, throwing his arms up. "I was worried this was going to be easy."

Sam was running his fingers over the deep, angular gouges in the tablet's surface, his forehead creased in a frown. "It's not like we can do anything about it without Kevin, though. So... what now?"

"Hide it," Dean said decisively. "You too, Cas... and I guess the demon bitch too."

"Gee, thanks," Meg drawled sarcastically. "You're such a gentleman."

~o~

After the first official meeting of what would soon be named Dumbledore's Army in the Hog's Head, Harry was finally feeling like he was making progress and doing good for the first time that year. His grin felt genuine for the first time in months, and even though Umbitch would lynch them if she found out, she had been out cold for the past day (after the sudden appearance of the Winchesters' new guests, which was something they really should look into) and so they hadn't had to worry about dodging her on the way to the course, something that good couldn't last, and by supper she was up and about again, albeit a bit woozy and with a lovely moustache that Harry was just positive the Weasley twins were responsible for. They'd really been stepping up their pranks lately, even to a degree that was likely to get them kicked out of school if they were ever truly caught red-handed.

The meeting had had a healthy turnout, and for the first time Harry really understood how many of his fellow schoolmates wanted to stand up against Umbridge and the Ministry (and even Voldemort!) and make a difference, and it gave him a warm feeling in his chest to know how many of them were willing to stand with him. Neville, Luna, Cho Chang, several assorted Weasleys, Lavender and some students he didn't even know. He didn't even have to worry about betrayal (at least without finding out who had done it) due to the jinx that Hermione had placed on the paper.

Still, an illicit club was an illicit club, and the recent closure several less-official school activities, even sanctioned ones, had made it very clear how Umbridge felt about that. Therefore, there could be no more meetings until they had, at the very least, a safe meeting place. It would help to have a staff supervisor, too, but Harry doubted that even the teachers sympathetic to their cause, such as MacGonagall, would want to risk losing jobs they loved and the wrath of the Ministry, and he couldn't blame them.

~o~

Unbeknownst to the as-yet-unnamed Dumbledore's Army, they were being watched as they met in the Hog's Head by both sides- Umbridge and the Ministry of Magic and the Order of the Phoenix. Meetings in a public place, while safer by far than anywhere inside Hogwarts Castle and outside of Umbridge's usual range of surveillance, were still public, and a certain student had overheard the meeting and sold them out to the High Inquisitor.

Three days later, new fliers were posted all along the walls of the school:

 _'All Student Organizations, Societies, Teams, Groups, and Clubs are henceforth disbanded. An Organization, Society, Team, Group or Club is hereby defined as a regular meeting of three or more students. Permission to re-form may be sought from the High Inquisitor (Professor Umbridge). No Student Organization, Society, Team, Group, or Club may exist without the knowledge and approval or the High Inquisitor. Any student found to have formed, or to belong to, an Organization, Society, Team, Group, or Club that has not been approved by the High Inquisitor will be expelled.'_

~o~

Later that same day, Professors (and Dean was never, ever going to get used to that) Sam and Dean Winchester were summoned to the Headmaster's office to explain the two strangers who had apparently violated pretty much all the rules of magic and materialized in a heavily-warded castle in the middle of class.

Which, admittedly, which would be hard to explain with anything except the unbelievable truth, so that is exactly what they did, tag-teaming the story and taking turns explaining how and why Meg and Cas had gotten there, who and what they were, how useful they could be in teaching their classes, and promising several times over that they just needed a place to lie low for a while and wouldn't interfere with the workings of the school at all.

(Even though that last one was a bold-faced lie and they both knew it.)

Dumbledore, to his eternal credit, simply sat with this hands clasped in front of him and listened to the entire story without objecting or claiming that it was impossible, only interrupting to ask clarifying questions.

"Plus, they both have badass sparkly magic powers and could probably help protect against Moldy-guy," Dean pointed out.

Which is how an angel and a demon took up temporary residence at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.


	15. Chapter 15

**This chapter is short and I'm sorry. Anyways, happy Fourth of July to any American readers out there!**

~o~

As it happened, Harry, Ron and Hermione didn't have to wait all that long to get an explanation for the two strangers who had magically appeared in the middle of their Defense Against the Dark Arts class. One of them, at least, because the morning after Educational Decree Number Twenty-Four was passed and they were all in a rather sulky state, they were walking towards the room with the bleached-blonde and slightly terrifying woman shortly behind them. She was swinging one of the silver four-sided knives- an angel blade?- between her fingers. She'd washed all the blood and ash and other debris off, thank God, but her hair was still stained lightly pink. The Golden Trio filed into the room and took their seats, some of the last students to arrive. The woman reached the door and- stopped cold.

And looked up.

"Fuck you, guys, are you gonna let me in or not?"

Dean made an indecisive face. "Wow, I dunno, Meg, you didn't say the magic word."

" _Comedent eum canes et cor tuum erutos inferni item-_ " the woman shouted. Dean appeared to understand her, but was unfazed.

"Wrong magic word, sweetheart," he drawled.

The woman- Meg, apparently- looked like she was terribly tempted to rip his heart out through his back. "Please."

Sam got up, rolling his eyes at both of them in a manner that managed to clearly conveyed the sentiment of 'am I the only goddamn adult in this room?' and knocked some of the paint out of the intricate star-and-circle above the door. Meg immediately grinned at him, said, "Thanks, Sammy," and strode to the front of the room, all eyes on her by now.

Sam returned to his seat and picked up the book he had been reading, seemingly disinterested in everything that was going on. Dean's fingers were hovering over the engraved knife on his belt in a way that suggested he didn't even realize he was doing it, it was just instinct for him. Which made it much scarier, really, and Harry pointed it out to his friends, but silenced as the woman started to talk.

"Okay, listen up, kiddies. I'm Meg, and I'm a demon."

A disbelieving murmur rippled across the room, and Meg seemed to revel in it. Or maybe she was just looking forward immensely to proving them wrong, it was hard to say.

"Apparently," she continued, "these two knuckleheads decided to try and teach about demons without the genuine article present, which just-"

As she spoke, a pair of students, a Slytherin and a Ravenclaw, were whispering in the back of the room, and the demon whipped around to face them, cutting herself off with a downright terrifying evil smile. "Anything you'd like to share with the class?"

The two girls abruptly shut up, completely still for a beat before the Slytherin levered herself to her feet, her Ravenclaw friend tugging frantically at her sleeve and trying to pull her back into her seat. "Yeah, actually. Demons aren't... aren't real. Professor Umbridge said that the other day, right before you appeared."

Meg cocked her head to one side. "Did she now," she drawled, eyes sliding solid black with a blink. The Slytherin girl made a small whimpering noise. "I'm not real, am I?"

She held out a hand and the girl was shoved back against the back wall of the classroom with an audible noise, her feet leaving the ground. The demon licked her lips. "If I'm not real, what's holding you up there?"

"Meg!" The name was a barked command, and the few students in the room not transfixed by the increasingly impossible scene playing out at the back of the room glanced back to see Sam Winchester half out of his seat, glaring daggers at the demon. He didn't say anything else, but Meg seemed to get the unspoken message because she shrugged, dropped the girl unceremoniously to the ground and winked at her as her eyes slid back to natural brown before sashaying back up to the front of the room.

"Any other objections?" she asked with a teasing grin.

The room was dead silent.

~o~

Albus Dumbledore wasn't even a little bit surprised to see Severus Snape storm into his office with his black robes swirling over-dramatically around him, but the Headmaster was going to treasure the memory of the stormy-faced Potions professor snapping 'Chocolate Frogs' at the gargoyle with utmost seriousness.

"How may I help you, Severus? Oh, would you like a lemon drop?" he asked, gesturing towards the recently-refilled bowl. It seemed that every time Dean Winchester was in his office, the ever-present bowl needed to be restocked shortly afterwards.

"No," Snape snarled. "Apparently, one of the _guests_ your ridiculous new so-called Defense professors have brought in abused one of my students."

Dumbledore was completely certain that a full fifty percent of Snape's anger and frustration came from the fact that two Muggles had beaten him to the teaching position that he coveted. He'd tried several times to explain why he refused to give Snape the job, but the other teacher had always harbored a grudge about it and Dumbledore suspected he always would.

"Allow me to tell you," he began, "what the Professors Winchester have told me about their two guests."

~o~

High Inquisitor Dolores Umbridge was frustrated. Deeply frustrated. After the pleasant sleepy euphoria had worn off, she'd searched the school top to bottom for the two trespassers who'd clearly invaded the school and knocked her out. Twice. And then again for good measure. She was tempted to call Fudge and conduct a full ministry-sanctioned shakedown of the school, but she didn't want to bring the unbearably thick minister into what was rapidly degenerating into a circus. He was useful sometimes, but his bumbling had a way of complicating already tangled matters even further.

The rest of the teachers were being frustratingly obtuse, most of the students more or less refused to talk to her even on a good day (which this most definitely was not) and even her usual informants seemed scared stiff when she pressed them from information on the mysterious intruders.

It seemed like she was going to have to do it herself.

~o~

Later that night, a house elf named Dobby told a certain boy with a lightning scar about a very special room on the seventh floor corridor, directly across from the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy attempting to teach trolls ballet, and in doing so inadvertently provided the perfect meeting place for the fledgling Dumbledore's Army.

~o~

 **No one wants to help Umbridge. No one.**

 **By the way, what Meg says in Latin (very roughly) translates to "May your heart be ripped out and eaten by hellhounds. Again."**


	16. Chapter 16

**Sorry for the long wait! I've been doing driver's ed and some other stuff and long story short I've been busy. But on the upside, this chapter is a good length and it has a confrontation I think a lot of people wanted to see.**

~o~

Dolores Umbridge was veering dangerously close to a nervous breakdown. Harry was just sure of it. In fact, his fingers were crossed inside his robe and he was fairly sure the Weasley twins had been spiking her food with some prank products of theirs, which couldn't be stabilizing her mind at all. The cause of the instability seemed to be the man and woman who had materialized in front of the Winchesters' class- Umbridge had been hunting for them obsessively for days now, with no luck. Almost as though they were Apparating away every time she got close. However, as Hermione had reminded him on multiple occasions, that was simply impossible inside the walls of Hogwarts.

Umbridge was stumped and frustrated, and not in any condition to pose any sort of threat to what would shortly become known as Dumbledore's Army when it finally had its first official meeting in the Room of Requirement. Even though Meg was rather terrifying and Ron was positive she ate people, Harry kind of wanted to give her a hug for the accidental favor she'd done them.

Not that he would, of course. He liked being alive.

Meg continued to teach the class for another week in what might be politely called a no-nonsense manner and might be less politely but more correctly referred to as 'tyrannical.' They saw neither hide or hair of the brown-haired man who was already a minor hero at the school for knocking Umbridge out for a day (which Hermione had absolutely geeked out over, because _wandless magic_ ) for that time, but they saw plenty of the demon.

If nothing else, by the end of the week everyone in that class was one hundred percent sold on the fact that demons were, in fact, real. Just in time, in fact, because on Friday at dinner, when everyone was gathered in the great hall, the man in the tan trench coat just sort of... appeared behind the Winchesters. Neither seemed fazed by this, although the entirety of the rest of the hall jumped, screamed, or pulled out their wands, or some combination of the three.

"Dean," the man said flatly. "Something's coming. I think it's a brother of mine, looking for the tablet."

Both Winchesters cursed, Dean pulling the angel blade from his belt while Sam started towards the wall, using a knife to draw a line of blood across his hand. He yanked a painting off the wall, despite indignant protests from the figure within, and revealed a complex pattern done in what looked alarmingly like dried blood. Those students who'd been present for the impromptu angel lesson recognized it immediately, and some of the cleverer ones began connecting the dots.

Professor Umbridge, who now wore dark circles under her eyes and whose normally neatly styled hair was messy and lopsided, jumped to her feet the moment the man (angel, Hermione whispered half to herself but Harry and Ron along with a few other Gryffindors grouped around them were easily able to hear her) materialized and practically _howled_.

"You!" she snarled, pacing across the room. He looked momentarily nonplussed. "You're _trespassing_ on Hogwarts school grounds! You _knocked me out_!"

A look of slight recognition dawned on the man's face, although he still looked largely distracted, glancing towards the door every few seconds. "I'm afraid we don't have time for this right now. You're all in danger."

"From _you_!" she shrieked. "And these so-called teachers! They're _Muggles_! They're bringing _monsters_ and _trespassers_ into our halls!" By now she was directly in front of him, practically spitting in his face. Dean moved to intervene from where he'd taken up position by the doors, but Sam stopped him with a shake of his head and a mutter of 'Cas can handle this.'

The angel in question looked like he was about to object to the twin labels of monster and trespasser before cocking his head, confused, and taking a closer look at the garishly pink woman. "What..."

Almost faster than the eye could follow, he'd snatched something white off of Umbridge's belt. When he held it up, everyone could see it clearly, and several of the students who'd been subjected to detention with the awful woman, Harry included, flinched backwards, and many reached to rub the backs of their hands. It was a feather, one that had been modified into a quill pen.

"How did you come by this?" the angel asked, his tone now accusatory.

"Give it back!" Umbridge almost screamed, grabbing for it, but he held it up just out of her reach, examining it closely.

"This is an angel feather. One that's been... corrupted. Mutated by demonic forces. _How did you get it_?" he asked again, suddenly sounding almost threatening, blue eyes flashing. Instead of answering, the Hogwarts Head Inquisitor made a wordless noise that was half-frightened and half-furious and wrestled her wand from her belt, throwing curses, streaks of red and green light that dissolved into nothing against the angel's coat. When she stopped to frantically shake the stick, the angel's free hand flashed out and grabbed it, snapping it in two.

A light too bright to look at flashed at his fingers and the pristine white feather crumbled into ash. Umbridge dropped her useless wand and made a frightened noise when he turned to her. He reached out and tapped her forehead, and just like that she was gone.

The great hall was absolutely silent for a moment.

The great doors slammed open, rattling the room and shaking candles and paintings from the walls. A woman stalked in, wearing a sleek black business suit with her hair up in a no-nonsense bun. She paid no attention to the many students quailing away from her as she passed. Her cold eyes seemed to be solely fixed on the man at the end of the hall, and she came to a stop about six feet from him.

"Castiel," the woman said, coolly but with an edge of anger. "Where is it?"

"Simiel," he replied calmly. "Sister. You know I will not give it to you."

"It is _ours_ by _right_ ," she retorted. "You have been marked a traitor to our kind. Return the tablet and you will be welcomed home with open arms."

"It belongs to the humans," he objected immediately. "It was made for them by our Father to protect them from us.

"You would _destroy_ us."

"I would," he agreed, sounding infinitely sad.

As if on an unspoken signal, silver knives slid out of their sleeves and Simiel lunged forwards, the magical blades meeting in a shower of sparks. Their fight looked almost like a dance, smooth and graceful, both of the angels moving like water. If one knew Castiel and his fighting style, as the Winchesters did, they would recognize how he steered the battle away from the edges, away from the students, kept it in the center so they could stay safe.

She feinted, he moved, she kicked him in the stomach and sent him flying backwards into a table. The impact rattled the hall. She was straddling his chest in half a second, the geometric knife held up under his chin close enough that a rivulet of blood and Grace ran down his neck. "Where is it?"

He said nothing, just glanced up at something over her shoulder. A moment later, the angel froze, the knife falling from her limp hand and crashing to the ground, as blinding blue light exploded out of her eyes and mouth, a third silver blade buried in her back. She gasped once and fell over backwards, dead.

Dean Winchester reached down, retrieved his bloody angel blade, and helped his best friend to his feet.

Then the great hall exploded into pandemonium.


	17. Chapter 17

**PLEASE DON'T KILL ME.**

 **Oh my god. You all have my deepest and sincerest apologies for how much I've been neglecting this. Sophomore year has proven to be an evil bitch, and while I'm sure I'll get into the swing of things eventually, the workload has been pretty bad. Also, because I apparently hate myself and the feeling of having free time, I did NaNoWriMo this November, which burned me out for a good long time. Basically, updates will be few and far between for a good long while now, and I am so, so sorry. I'll still work on this whenever I have the chance, but a bad case of writers block really isn't helping.**

 **Well, with all that unhappy shit out of the way, lets move on to the chapter!**

~o~

(Former) Hogwarts High Inquisitor Dolores Umbridge was very, very cold. She pulled her knit pink sweater tighter around herself, but it provided little protection against the freezing temperatures, and the wind seemed to blow right through her. A penguin waddled up to her, watching her with fascination. She glared at it. Stupid animal. How dare it gape brainlessly at her like that?

The penguin took a few more steps, staring up at her with big orange eyes, and nuzzled against her leg. No. Stop. Stupid creature.

~o~

"Believe it or not," Sam said with a distinct note of uncertainty in his tone that gave away the telling fact that even he didn't believe it, "there is a reasonable explanation for all of this."

Dumbledore glanced up from where he was inspecting the dead angel, twenty-foot ashy wings burned into the floor beneath its body, with the assistance of Madame Pomfrey. The rest of the teachers hovering were nervously behind them, the students having been shepherded hurriedly back to their common rooms after the initial panicked outburst. "I should hope so. I want to know the whole story, and I suspect that we'll have to think of something to tell the students, as all this had the misfortune to occur before their eyes."

Sam winced. Dean was behind him tending to Cas, which left him the job of explaining everything. It was probably good, because between them he was the better one at that particular task. Still, he wasn't looking forward to laying out the whole heavenly mess.

He sighed and began. "Okay. So. That was an angel, but not a good one like Cas over there. Right now, the angels are being run by this lady named Naomi, who is..."

He trailed off, trying to find a good word for it.

"-an evil brainwashing bitch," Dean said succinctly from behind him, an edge of anger still obvious in his voice. Clearly, he wasn't about to let go of what happened to Cas anytime soon.

"Yeah, that," Sam agreed.

One of the teachers, one Sam hadn't met yet, frowned. "I do hope you don't use language like that in front of the students," she muttered under her breath, but neither the Winchesters nor Dumbledore reacted.

"And angels aren't exactly fluffy wings, harps and Hallmark cards," Dean continued. "Most of them are feathery douchebags who only care about themselves and their damn destiny instead of actually helping humans."

"Aside from Cas," Sam chipped in, picking up the thread of explanation again. "He's got this tablet that's basically got a bunch of information on angels, so obviously both the angels and the demons want it."

"Will any more be coming?" Dumbledore asked immediately. "Will the students be in danger?"

Dean scoffed. "They're always in danger, you built your school next to something called the Forbidden freaking Forest-"

"Not helping, Dean," Sam muttered before raising his voice slightly to address the assembled teachers again. "It's possible there will be more, though I don't think the one Dean killed had time to get the message out. If there are, we take full responsibility for protecting your school from them."

He hesitated, then added, "If you want us to leave, we will."

Dumbledore stared at him for a moment, then turned away to speak with a few of the other teachers in hushed voices.

"What do we do if they kick us out?" Dean asked. "Go back to the bunker? Cas isn't in any state to poof us back there, and all the angels and demons know where it is anyways."

Sam grimaced. "I don't know, okay? We'll figure something out."

From his spot on the floor, Cas frowned, too. "I'm sorry for causing trouble. I was hopeful that we hadn't been followed here."

Dean pivoted on his heel and pointed at the angel. "Don't apologize for almost getting murdered, Cas!"

Cas opened his mouth, looking like he was about to object, when Dumbledore politely cleared his throat and all three heads swiveled to face him where he was smiling kindly at them, clearly having come to a decision.

~o~

"I can't believe he didn't fire us," Sam said later, half-distracted by a heavy book that he was working his way through.

"Yeah, like you helped," Dean grumbled from where he was glaring at Meg, who in turn was wrapping a clean white bandage around Cas's neck. "'If you want us to leave, we will?' Where would we even go, man?"

"Didn't your mommy ever tell you your face will get stuck like that?" Meg finally snapped in response to Dean's scowl. "Oh, wait."

Dean started to his feet, snarling, "You black-eyed bitch-"

Sam grabbed his brother's arm and yanked him bodily back into the chair. "Not now, Dean."

Dean strained against the hold for a moment before slumping against the chair like a puppet with cut strings.

"Anyway," Sam said, attempting to steer the conversation back towards their earlier argument. "You really want a bunch of witches convinced that we're dangerous to their students? If they did kick us out, it would be best to go quietly instead of protesting. They still have magic."

"Good point," Dean admitted, before twisting around to look at Cas. "Hey, Cas. You feeling better."

"Yes," the angel rumbled, then, softer, "thank you, Dean."

"Hey, don't mention it."

~o~

Harry Potter had no idea what was going on.

On the one hand, the cautious hope that Umbridge might really be gone made him feel almost dizzy with happiness, but on the other hand... _what on in the name of Merlin's beard had happened_?

All of the students had been shepherded out of the Great Hall after the shocked silence finally snapped, and many of them hadn't gotten very good looks at what had happened (it had been so _fast_ ) but Harry was positive he'd seen the shorter Professor Winchester kill the stranger who'd just stormed into Hogwarts- itself unheard of, due to all the wards and protections on the school.

On the upside, at least they'd won the first Quidditch game of the year.

There was a thump from outside the window, and a moment later Ron came running into the common room.

"Harry! Harry, Hagrid's back!"


End file.
